Great Ocean Road 11/27/12 - 11/28/12

Leaving Portland, we took a couple of days to head east back to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road.  It's a 150 mile stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia that hugs the coast line with plenty of spots to park the car and walk out to great looking view points of the Southern Pacific Ocean.  There are numerous landmarks of limestone and sandstone rock formations, formed by erosion, spreading the coastline.  It's one of the most amazing displays of the power of nature and weather.     

We got lucky and had beautiful weather to start off the day.  The sunshine and clear skies made the colors from the rocks and the ocean so intense.  It was breathtaking.  At the first stop on the Great Ocean Road we walked down the path and when we saw it for the first time we just said, "WOW"! Here are some pictures from some of the "main" stops.

London Arch, formerly known as London Bridge, which has an interesting story told below:

The Arch:

The Loch Ard Gorge:

The Grotto:

The Twelve Apostles (the name is misleading because there were never 12 limestone stacks, it started at 9 and 1 collapsed, so there's 8 stacks now):

We stayed at Cape Otway that evening in a cabin before we made our way to the end of the road the next morning.  We got to see lots of koalas in our camping area.

The next day the weather was overcast and gloomy, so we finished off the drive along the ocean and headed up to see about an open range zoo.  Since we aren't heading to Africa on this trip, we thought why not visit some African animals while in Australia at the Werribee Zoo?!   We rode around in an open vehicle and saw hippos, camels, scimitar oryxes, giraffes, zebras, rhinos, ostriches, and numerous other animals!  Kristin loved our mini African safari. 

We rested up in Werribee that evening before we returned our car the next morning and met up with Matt's friend, Mike, in Melbourne.