Great Ocean Road (wet & winding with golfing Kangaroos?)

We departed Melbourne this day under an ominous weather forecast - five warnings - heavy rain, high wind, thunderstorms, marine warning and cattle grazing warning!

We took an Uber ride from our hotel in the cbd to the rental car agency near the airport. We rented from Apex Rental Car, a New Zealand company that also operates in Australia. The car we got was a Kia Cerato Sedan, nice size. The weather was cloudy, a bit cooler and threatening skies. We drove to our first stop, the I Site Tourist Info Centre in Torquay, about 75 min drive. It started to rain, heavy, just as we were getting out of the car in Torquay. We got some good info at the i site, including a lunch recommendation for Swell, a nearby restaurant/cafe. We went there and had a nice sandwich and coffee, hoping for a let up in the rain. The place was very busy with an eclectic lunch crowd of locals and tourists.

We then drove on and stopped for a look at Bells Beach, a famous surfing beach, where they were having a world class Rip Curl Surfing competition, that had of course been called off for the day.

We then made a stop at the Great Ocean Road Chocolaterie and Ice Creamery. This was quite an operation with a factory and shop, very busy lots of families around.

On to the next stop of the town of Angelsea. Here we stopped at the Angelsea Golf Course, as the rain abated slightly, not to play golf, but to take a kangaroo tour! Yes, you read that correctly, a kangaroo tour at a golf course. This golf course is adjacent to a regional nature reserve and there is usually about 300 kangaroos that are wandering the golf course at any one time. They call the course and the surrounding reserve home and they often wander around in “mobs” of about 40 or so. They are most prominent in early morning and late afternoon. The tour takes about a dozen or so people around parts of the golf course on a motorized cart, with a club volunteer driving, providing commentary and answering any questions. The tour lasted about 40min for us. It started to rain again while we were on the tour!

If you are curious to see what this looks like, the golf course has a live webcam on Youtube. The link is below. Remember the time difference, as the picture may appear black because it is night time. You can scroll back I think as far as 12 hours.

There are also links below to videos we took during our kangaroo tour!

Next stop was Lorne and Erskine Falls. Erskine Falls is a waterfall that was about a 15min drive off the highway and a 20min walk to the 30metre waterfall that drops into a thick forest of fern trees.

Then we travelled on to Teddy’s Lookout for a high up view of the coast and beach. We then got back on the Great Ocean Road to take in the beautiful coastal views on the winding and unfortunately wet road.

As darkness crept in we had carry on to our destination for the night, Port Campbell. We had let our accommodation we would not arrive until about 8pm. We booked the Southern Ocean Motor Inn, where we had reserved a sea view Queen room for $146ca, for the one night. The motel overlooks the beach in Port Campbell. They told us a late check in, or more accurately, arrival, was fine, they would just leave the key under the floor mat outside the room door and gave us our room number on the phone. Check out the next morning was just leave the key in the drop box. The motel was quite busy as the parking lot was almost full when we arrived after dark.