Great Ocean Road & Grampians

These were a few absolutely wonderful 3 days in Victoria's national parks! The bus tour was simply fantastic. A colorful mix of 24 people from Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland, Australia, Zimbabwe, Scotland, UK, and myself as the only German 😊 I learned a lot, not only about Australia/Victoria but also about the many other countries that were represented. There was even a whole family with 3 generations (grandma + grandpa, mom, and daughter). It was really cool that they made such a long journey together from Canada.

And of course, I didn't just meet a lot of new interesting people, but also saw a lot. The weather was as predicted a little cloudy and cold. But it really only rained at one stop, and the sun even came out briefly 😊 It was predicted to be the worst storm in 100 years, and in Melbourne it actually rained 12cm!!!!! during the same time. I definitely escaped that. It's really interesting to think that the days before it was still 34 degrees.

You can see everything we saw on the tour in the pictures. First, we were at a slightly smaller beach south of Torquay, but it was not really beach weather. We had lunch in Cape Otway, where there is a small lighthouse that we climbed. The view from up there was amazing! (And for once, we even had clear blue skies) Next, we went through the Great Otway National Park, where we walked along a road with a lot of eucalyptus trees, and therefore, a lot of koalas. It is currently mating season, and you won't believe the sounds male koalas can make when they smell/impress a female. However, they have very poor eyesight, so unfortunately, the male koala missed the branch that the female was sitting on. We also saw a koala with a baby in its pouch. Incredibly cute! But koalas are not very popular here because they destroy trees (and are sometimes worse than forest fires), so many of the trees are wrapped in plastic so that the koalas cannot climb them. Then we continued to the main part of the Great Ocean Road with the Gibson Steps and the Twelve Apostles. In the evening, our tour guide cooked a huge meal with our help (roast with lots of vegetables!) I probably won't get such delicious food again so quickly. The hostel was also really nice! Clean, spacious, and cozy 😊

The next morning, we continued along the Great Ocean Road to Loch Ard Gorge, where there were many different little paths to the lookouts, and you could also walk down to the beach, but it was so windy that we constantly got sand in our eyes. The last stops were the London Bridge and the Bay of Martyrs, before we drove through the Grampians for a while. Our tour guide would shout every time he saw a kangaroo, emu, llama, kakadu, or any other animal on the road :D That always startled everybody. We had lunch at Towers Hill, which was a really quiet place with a circular path around lakes. And there were also emus that tried to steal our food. We had grilled burgers/sausages again. The last stop of the day was a small center in the northern Grampians, where we walked a 1-hour trail and encountered a lot of kangaroos, some even with baby kangaroos in their pouches. So cute! Our accommodation for the night was absolutely amazing, a wilderness lodge right in the middle of nowhere, no reception, no internet, no wifi, but so beautiful. It is run solely by an old man, just like you see in the movies. A really talkative person who tells stories about all his adventures. We slept in individual cabins and could watch the kangaroos from the window. With the 4 others and the 3 dogs from the farm (who just walked ahead of us the whole time without us ever asking them to accompany us), we explored the area in sunny weather. Absolutely dreamlike! A few lakes and otherwise just trees, open space, and animal sounds. But I couldn't imagine living so remotely permanently!

Today was already the last day of the tour. Our journey took us first to a lookout over a large part of the Grampians and then to the MacKenzie Falls, where we walked along for 1.5 hours to another place where our tour guide was waiting for us with a barbecue. And again: such a beautiful and untouched, idyllic landscape. Just see for yourself in the pictures. Now we are on the way back to Melbourne, and since I wanted to use the time better than sleeping, here is this blog post 😊

It feels like it's getting longer, but as I said, for those who want to read, they can read, and if it's too much, the pictures speak for themselves 😊

Best regards, Julia