Great Ocean Road- part 1 - 3 Videos

 Great Ocean Road

Rainy Bike Ride

Today started with rain, again.  I did promise the girls a ride on the family bike that you can hire from the caravan park but the weather has kept us indoors for what seems ages. However just as we packed up our unit to leave, the sun popped out and so i decided to stretch our departure out a little and take them for a tour of the park by "Pedal Power".

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Heather needed to be on board with me because the leg power required to push 4 people is pretty heavy. Off we go and the giggles from the girls was non stop from the time we left til the time that mum and dad were exhausted from it and we took the bike back. Through the huge puddles and all around the park extremities. Now we set off for the Great Ocean Road.


King Of The Road

The Road itself is quite thin and care must be taken all the time. Signs everywhere saying "high accident area. take care". Stopping for a couple of pictures at the beginning to record it and also because we were assuming that it may keep raining. Fortunately for us the weather holds and the view is lovely.

Beach Stop photo

Dad & The Kids

Great Ocean Road Memorial Arch

All along the edges are what are called 'cut off areas' and this is for slow vehicles (that means us) to pull off to the side to allow others past. I did capture some video from the drivers seat by holding the camera against the side pillar and driving one handed. This may sound extremely dangerous but in fact as long as you concentrate on only the road and forget the camera, you drive no worse than if you had 2 hands on the wheel. I only captured when there were no other cars oncoming. (see video)

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   Our goal today is Johanna beach camping ground for an unpowered site. 50 sites available with no drinking water, but close to the beach. This also puts us right in the middle of the Otway National Park. Great area for tree top walks, Wilderness walks and Lots of koalas.

The Sun Breaks through

Mia's Windy Lookout!

Catching Salmon, The easy way.

During the trip heather caught sight of some Dolphins jumping in the surf at Apollo bay and so we stopped at the next roadside Cut off. There were 2 other cars there at the time and one of them happened to be a professional fisherman. His wife explained to us that he was using a special lure to catch Salmon off the rocks. I shot some video and if you notice he catches a salmon every cast into the water. His wife offered us some of them and so we took her up on it..  beautiful fresh from the ocean fish for dinner. This irritated me alot because of the luckless fishing attempts i have made along the way. ( see video)

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Salmon Fillets for dinner!

 We make a couple of stops for fuel and sightseeing and arrive at about 3.15pm. After setting up we shoot up the road (about 8kms) to grab some fresh water, coffee and to take a look around.

There is a BIG TREE for viewing at Lavers Hill and so before it gets dark we thought we would take a look. A 45 minute round trip through the very wet and green rain forest we discover that the tree had fallen last year due to wind and erosion so we only got to see the BIG FALLEN TREE, But it was a good energy burner for the girls who walked really well and complained very little. Lily needed a piggy back ride toward the end but all in all a cool little nature walk. As we left it was dark and so back to camp to eat dinner (yummy salmon) and warm up for a chilly night by the sea.

Mackenzie Rainforest Walk & Orbost geese

 Move to Lakes Entrance

A quick pack up today and make our way out of Mallacoota to steer towards Lakes Entrance. Our trips now are being planned for quicker shorter distances as the girls don't cope well with being in the car any longer than 2 hours at a time. The perfect trip planned with 2 stops on the way. Are we there yet?  Are we there yet? is all we seem to hear and today we hear it within the first 10 kilometers. The movie players are a good investment for these types of days. 'Despicable Me' was their first movie followed by 'The cat in the hat.'
We arrive at Cann river and stop for coffee and to grab a map from the Information centre. 10 minute break is enough because our next stop is only 20mins further at MacKenzie Rainforest Boardwalk.  We prep the girls for a 1 kilometer walk through a very wet but lovely rainforest area. Please see video.

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After this we pop back into the car for another drive to 'Orbost'. This should put us about 55kms from Lakes Entrance and definately within reach. As we approach Orbost it looks like a one horse town in the middle of nowhere. Slowly driving down the main street we see 2 geese walking along the road. All traffic is giving way to them but then we find a sign that says Give way to geese.

Check the video Below. Apologies for the creaking sound during any raw video footage but any movement from me will produce these pops and crack noises. I will try my best to eliminate as time goes by

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These 2 geese are just walking along together window shopping at the seemingly empty run down shop windows... Amazing to see and quite funny for the girls. 

Orbost road sign

St James church

There is a parking area at the end of town for caravans and that's where we stop for lunch. Lunch today is pancakes for the girls and mummy and daddy are eating the fish we caught from the day before. a good size Tailor from our boating expedition and daddy caught a pretty nice little flathead the night before while the family were sleeping.

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After lunch some photos of the girls playing at the park and a couple of mummy at the derelict Butter factory. Nice one Mummy!

all aboard for the final push to Lakes Entrance.

Afternoon arrival

We are absolutely astounded at the tiny sizes of the caravan parks here... it looks like owners have converted their back yards to make a van park. How they expect us to get in there is pretty tough. Although we found (thank to a local gent that guides us) a great little park that has enough space for us due to its larger size grounds and we book into our first en suite stay. En suite stay parks have a little bathroom at the side of your van for showers etc and toilet. Very handy and a nice change from our squishy little bathroom. Fish and Chips for dinner tonight and we are done... Tomorrow we are expecting rain so we might plan to do some indoor stuff with the girls. Some phone calls must be done as well so Daddy will be kept busy doing that..