The long and winding road

One of the most scenic drives in Australia is the Great Ocean Road, 151 miles long. We drove about 3/4 of it, nearly all of it being along the coast. There are many pullouts to just stop and marvel at how beautiful it is. I hope that whatever you are reading this on has really good graphics. The blues and turquoises in the waters are incredible!

And some lucky person lives in this house!

On a restroom stop, we came across these guys just out in the wild! Kelli wanted us to bring one home, and there were plenty, but I think there are laws........

There are several well-known attractions to stop and see along the way. The first we encountered was Gibson Steps. Old Man Gibson had land at the top of the cliff, but he wanted a way to get down to the beach, so he carved 86 steps into the cliff-side! These are since gone, but they have concrete steps for us all to climb down (oh, yea, and then back up!). 

Now for some reason, we had it in our heads that Gibson's Steps led to what is probably the most famous highlight of the drive, which is the Twelve Apostles. These are massive limestone stacks off the coast, some standing as high as 45 meters (that's 49 yards to you Americans; oh, wait, that's us). People are awestruck with the beautiful limestone standing high above the water. There are only 8 left, the other 4 having collapsed. We got down the Steps and we saw this:

Kind of like our 3 penguins out of 13,000, I thought, "Well, here's one Apostle!" Jokes on us.........again........ So we get in the car and not 2 minutes later see a sign for a whole Visitor's Center for the Twelve Apostles! Eureka! That wasn't it after all! Whew!

So here were some more and as we traveled on the path to get to the outlooks, we had our second encounter with Australian wildlife - this wallaby had a joey in her pouch!

What's the difference between a wallaby and a kangaroo, you ask? Yea, I didn't know either. BUT you will find out in my next blog post! Stay tuned!

We meandered around Port Campbell for a bit before heading to our AirBnB for the night and ate pizza in a hostel that just so happened to have a brewery in it! Aaaahhhh I'd never been in a hostel, let alone eat and drink in one!

It was a good day........... or so I thought! (Refer to next post)