Currently I’m sitting in a Bed and Breakfast located right in the heart of St Kilda. For the past 8 days we’ve journeyed along the coastline between Adelaide and Melbourne, taking in the rolling hills and wild coastline of the Fleurieu Peninsula and the spectacular iconic scenery of Great Ocean Road. We gave ourselves a week to complete the 900 kilometre trip and the journey has been very relaxed. We even had time to discover some epic locations along the way.
On leaving Adelaide we headed towards the Fleurieu Peninsula and onto the tourist drive which took us through farmland and along the coast. Here the landscapes are windswept and expansive. Green hills, stripped of trees roll steeply down to vast seas, buffered only by isolated, debris-strewn beaches. I spent time exploring the shoreline and picking through seaweed and the flotsam and jetsam that had washed up from the ocean’s depths.
We stayed a night in a little place called Rapid Bay tucked between the naked hills. Fisherman sat on the pier pulling in squid and the ocean lapped quietly at the pebbled shore. We set up camp right next to the beach and woke up to the sound of soft waves greeting the morning.
The next day we rolled into Victor Harbour where I explored The Whale Centre and Granite Island whilst Benny worked in the van. In the late afternoon we headed off towards the Victorian border and made it as far as Robe, finding another beachside camp-site in a centrally located holiday park. The weather was woeful with squally rain and winds so we decided to push on the next morning. On our way through to Port Fairy we stopped in at Mt Gambier and visited Umpherston Sink Hole, a unique garden that I’ve had on my list of ‘places to see’ for quite a while. Basically, back in the late 1800’s, a guy with some mad creative vision turned a big round, crater-like sinkhole into a magnificent garden full of hydrangeas and waterfalls of ivy. It’s very beautiful and has a whimsical novelty about it that I loved.
That afternoon we arrived in Port Fairy and found a holiday park in which to set up camp for the night. We were nearing the start of Great Ocean Road and I was getting excited to spend the next few days rolling through the magnificent coastline.
Aaaah, Great Ocean Road! What a dream it is for the roadtripper! We had driven through this magical part of Australia several years earlier and I had always wanted to come back and explore it further. Suffice to say, I was pretty excited to be back! We spent three days meandering along Great Ocean Road, taking our time with it, wandering along the cliffs, stopping off at quiet bays and beaches, soaking in the glorious scenery. There was wind, and chills and a few spits of rain but we rugged up as best we could and let the wild south coast weather just try to defeat our spirits! It didn’t! Hah!
Along the way we stopped overnight in Port Campbell, Apollo Bay and Lorne, each place imbedded with its own charming ocean-side character. We looked for koalas in the trees at Cape Ottway and did our first rainforest walk of the trip on the way to Lorne. Then, all too soon we were back in the big city, having made our way to Melbourne. And now here I am in a St Kilda B and B dreaming of being on the road, in the wild again! Aaaah, van life is proving to be such fun!
