"On the Road Again"... The Great Ocean Road, Victoria

On Jan. 21st., we flew back to Melbourne from Darwin and arrived around midnight. We stayed at a hotel close to the airport, caught the bus from the airport back to Melbourne to pick up our stored large luggage and spent one last night in Melbourne.

Yesterday morning, we picked up our rental car in Melbourne, negotiated the city streets and made our way back to the airport to pick up our friend Julie (from the UP!). She has joined us for the next month of adventure travel. We're excited to have another friend spend time with us Down Under (and in New Zealand).

Somehow we missed each other at the international area. It was bonkers! (Melbourne is like a new city with thousands of international folks visiting for the Australian Open Tennis tournament.) Luckily, we had an emergency plan and we found her at the airport hotel where we had planned to store our large luggage. After greeting Julie, and getting our luggage stored, we walked to a local pub for lunch, and started our drive to the Great Ocean Road Surf Coast for our last week in Australia!

The Great Ocean Road region has more than 400km of coastal road to explore. We drove from the Melbourne Airport and arrived in Lorne, a stunning coastal town around 4p.m. We stretched our legs with a walk along the beach and then a walk back along the town to pick out our restaurant for dinner. Plus, we were intent on keeping Julie awake until dark as she was totally jet-lagged. The best way to deal with it is stay awake and not nap.

Today we got up and headed out the door of our hotel to walk the track near the beach. Somehow we ended up on the beach (all the rock formation were calling to us... "come on down"). The shoreline lured us along for about an hour. On our walk back, we found a nice cafe and had lunch. Julie feasted on a wholewheat veggie pasty, Bob had a meat pie and I enjoyed a veggie/ham sandwich. Yummy!