The Great Southern Touring Route – Day 1

Saturday, 2nd January 2010

Despite telling fellow road trippers to wait at the Southern Cross Station, in front of Hungry Jack’s, at 7.30am sharp, I managed to wake up at 5am, turned off my alarm and fell asleep, then woke up again at 7.40am when Esther rang me up. fml. I was seized with a sudden guilt and sheer panic as I quickly contemplated whether I should bother showering (eventually I did, at lightning speed), and then changed, packed the remaining stuff I had left till the last minute, and hauled plastic bags of stuff (at least 7 kilogrammes in total, thanks to the two 3L bottles of apple juice and water) with my two fists and left, together with that day’s copy of The Age. But not before I had to backtrack slightly when I remembered that I had forgotten to take the receipt for the car rental with me. =.=”

I huffed and puffed my way, walking as fast as I could with the 7kg+ of stuff weighing me down, before I eventually slowed down altogether when I reached one end of the Southern Cross Station (it is very large). A few minutes before reaching the station, I received an SMS from Esther asking me to hurry up as her uncle was waiting together with them, something I hadn’t expected. So eventually I was late for nearly an hour, and felt quite bad at making Esther, her aunt and uncle, and Estee wait that long fml.

Long story short, we walked towards BC Car Rentals, which was right next to Vue Grande which I had very nearly stayed there when I arrived, sorted out the paperwork, signed, and left with a shiny red Hyundai Getz.

Estee making the maiden drive out from the city—I was a bit of a wuss and didn’t want to drive through the city myself, and despite one or two turns that were almost wrong, we managed to make it out to the freeway.

We reached Geelong after an hour, and then went straight to Torquay.

We made our first stop at a parking lot when we spotted a scenery that enthralled us.

A part of the skies were grey, and an exposed section made the still lake reflect the blue brilliantly.

Me.

A HDR-ed beach.

At the beach.

Me and Esther.

Click to enlarge this panorama.

A reflection of Estee which I love.

Dang book of maps belonging to BC Rentals was reflected on the windscreen in this pic. :/ There’s an arch of the Great Ocean Road here.

A beautiful HDR image of another beach—both Estee and I had to climb down a slope of some kind to gain proper access to this view.

Preparing to eat lunch—in the form of sandwiches—by the roadside, only to be swarmed by flies till it forced us to seek refuge within the bowels of the car. Quite a new experience, this—both eating inside the car during my first ever road trip, and being swarmed by flies like that.

Passing by a bridge near a beach. (I’m not keeping track on which beaches we have passed, as we’re on the Great Ocean Road, and clearly that means passing by beaches that stretched on for hundreds of kilometres.)

Where dogs are allowed and banned.

Esther and Estee (lol) jumping.

A father and his kid surfing.

A surfer walking by the beach.

Me with a diving jump shot wtf.

Boring jump shot.

A female surfer.

Tons of people by the beach.

Me and Estee with two other Australians.

Estee in front of another beach, where we stopped by the roadside yet again.

Et moi.

With Esther.

Click to enlarge this panorama.

A HDR of yet another beach.

Sitting on the edge, looking at the beach.

As we progressed through our mini-road trip, grey and blue skies interchanged rapidly, and it rained too at one point, which was when I took over from Esther and drove as she had problems seeing in the rain.

At the entrance to a lighthouse, where we had to detour for like 10-15 minutes to reach here, which we didn’t want to enter in the end as it cost some AUD$17 or something just to enter, which wasn’t that worth it in our opinion.

On the way out, I spotted a bunch of people looking up at a tree, and when some of us yelled “KOALA!”, I stopped and parked the car immediately to get a better look.

It actually looks un-cuddly when it’s awake (this is a different koala than the above).

Looking fiercely at me.

Fighting with the earlier sleeping koala, presumably over territorial issues.

By the road yet again, with an NZ-ish landscape.

Our Hyundai Getz and the pretty surroundings.

Two cyclists.

At yet another stop again.

Finally at the Twelve Apostles! We were quite late actually, as we were supposed to arrive at our guesthouse in Halls Gap by 9pm, but it was already 4.30pm and we were still hundreds of kilometres away from our destination. From the maps in the few booklets we have, we still have a very long way to go and it seems that we weren’t making much progress, as the Great Ocean Road was fairly windy and we kept stopping to take photographs of beautiful views as well as in towns (not necessarily a bad thing, makes no sense to just zip by!).

They look exactly like the photos I used to see in promotional features of Melbourne or Australia.

Me, right beside what could easily be one of the most beautiful places in Victoria.

Esther.

At another corner of the Twelve Apostles.

Et moi.

Esther and Aunty Betty.

At the beginning platform of the Twelve Apostles, where I finally get to take a pic after the various horde of people had moved on.

Estee.

At the entrance.

Us making more sandwiches from groceries me, Esther, and Aunty Betty had previously bought from Woolworths QV.

The straight road to nowhere. We eventually decided to use my GPS to look for a shorter route that would bring us to our guesthouse without using the Great Ocean Road, and we eventually found ourselves in the countryside, amidst farms and vast fields that stretch on on either side.

Another look of the scenery.

Filling up petrol, which was surprisingly cheaper in a dead town in the middle of nowhere compared to re-fueling in the city.

Parakeets—rather colourful birds with iridescent feathers.

Parakeets flying away as our car approached them.

I think “amazing”, “view”, “scenery”, and “beautiful” are the most repetitive words here…

Estee taking over the wheels.

This picture was snapped at a minute before 8pm, and it was still fairly bright.

lol our Getz looks a little like a shiny red sports car here. Driving around here can be both awesome but boring after a while as it’s really mostly straight roads (with a few crossroads) as we went on.

Finally reached Tim’s Place! The old lady who was working there greeted us at the reception desk, and told us that she left a message (through voicemail) asking whether I was really coming there at 9pm or not lol. It was only AUD$25 per night, and as comfy as the backpackers I’ve been in New Zealand! This pic depicts Esther cooking instant noodles for us.

My Homebrand instant noodles, Oriental flavour.

What’s neat about Tim’s Place is the fact that there’s free wireless Internet (we regretted not bringing our laptops), but we could use the available laptop there to browse around the Net for free. Not to mention that there was a small, nice lounge to watch DVDs and TV in. So impressed we were with the facilities and the friendliness expounded by the staff there, that we regretted that we only had a night to spend there, otherwise I definitely don’t mind staying for another extra night.

I finished up reading The Memory Keeper’s Daughter that night, and prolly slept at around 1am.