Great Ocean Road

I had been looking forward to this trip ever since an Australian told me in Paris about one of the world's great road trips.

We had planned it for a long time. But on the day, the sky turned a vicious black as we packed our things into our little red car. In fact the radio was giving flash flood warnings and telling people who don’t need to go outside, to stay in their homes.

Yet we were determined to get back out of the city and out of our hosts’ way for a while. The trip was already a day late due to rental car confusion but with a little luck we managed to beat the weather out of town. We hurried up the coast to find a suitable campsite and actually managed to avoid the month’s dose of rain that was dumped on Melbourne that night. For now.

‘The Razorback’ used to extend much farther out to sea and has seen a lot of erosion from one wave every 14 seconds over the years.

The windy cliffs and corniches of this little road were already fun to drive. It was a shame we got such a late start and had to hurry to find camp and set up. Luckily the two information sites on the way gave us some detailed camping maps. One of them had a perfect free and no-frills site tucked up on the woods just above the windy road. So the weather held out and we were so close to the coast we could hear the waves crashing that night.

The next day we carried on up the ’shipwreck coast’ to reach our final destination, the Twelve Apostles. An then the weather finally caught up with us. First with fog, then rain, then relentless downpour as we pulled into the twelve apostles visitors centre (not even visible from the carpark). The short cliff walk out to the viewpoint seemed ridiculous. It just wasn’t going to happen. I must admit that the busloads of Japanese tourists had come farther, and were probably more disappointed than we were.

Here we finally spotted the most elusive Australian wildlife - The Koala had escaped us for so long we weren't sure if we were even looking in the right places. After one month in the wild, we finally spotted several koalas in the trees just above the winding road. They were quite active eating, scratching and climbing from branch to branch.

The information centre in the nearest town told us that the rain would keep coming until the next morning. So now from inside our little car we had to decide whether to forget the apostles and find (some feasible way) to pitch our tent in national park - as planned - or retreat to Melbourne altogether.

Normally we would have stubbornly saved our money and hoped for the best miserable outcome. But under the hammering rain on our roof, we had a moment of clarity. There was a third option. We could spend 80 dollars for a bed & breakfast and make the most of this trip, waking early in the morning to give the twelve apostles a second chance.

Ships from Europe often met a treacherous fate when they hit this coast of Australia.

Now this was one of the smartest things we had done in a while. We soon warmed up and dried off in the little cabin that even had a kitchen, living room with a wood stove, and bathroom with a jacuzzi. Most importantly we were inside listening to the rain and not dripping wet under a thinly insulated tent. We cooked a dinner and watched tv all night in our cozy unexpected home. What’s more the weather was just a little windy in the morning and we were able to explore the shipwreck coast without any treacherous weather. It was a little lesson learned!