The Great Ocean Road

Catching up with all and sundry since my return from holiday has resulted in a belated publishing of this post. It has been sitting in my WordPress drafts for a couple of weeks now but reading it is an agreeable recap of a splendid trip. Can't wait to visit Australia again.

The Great Ocean Road is a 150 mile stretch of road built by Australian soldiers returning from WWI as a memorial to their fallen comrades, it is considered the largest war memorial in the world. It is a stunning drive and a road which hugs the ocean closely. The ‘ocean’ here is a stretch of water lying between Victoria and Tasmania called the Bass Strait, named after George Bass, an explorer who sailed along this coastline during the late eighteenth century.

Beach on the Great Ocean Road

To reach the Great Ocean Road we drove around Port Phillip from Melbourne. Port Phillip and its urban centres are in my opinion a wonder of man and nature. Essentially the urban sprawl (a term meant in a non disparaging fashion) containing the city of Melbourne and various towns such as Geelong, circles Port Phillip, a large natural bay the equivalent in size to the south east of England. It is possible to completely circumnavigate Port Phillip if you catch a ferry between two narrow spits of land that lie either side of the thin channel leading from the bay to the sea. And if you obeyed the strictly enforced speed limits and travelled in a reasonably paced car, such a circumnavigation could take fully eight hours to accomplish.

This glorious winding two lane highway is a soul full experience with curious and fresh vistas emerging around each new bend in the road. As you journey along you’re free to breathe in this enchanting spectacle and are interrupted only by the sound of water, which will take the form of the sea lapping gently onto a beach or a heavy thunder of crashing waves on granite rocks.

Clifftop view of the Bass Strait

Although the views are certainly spectacular and demand mention somewhere, the reason that this blog post sneaks onto a VW Campervan Hire website comes thanks to a pale blue VW campervan spotted outside the Grand Pacific hotel on the outskirts of Lorne. A couple enjoying the view with a drink, looked on bemused as I briefly pulled up outside the hotel to take a few snaps of the van and then like a complete anorak drove off again down the road.

So here is Joy the pale blue VW campervan, I hope you enjoy them.

Joy the Pale Blue VW Campervant

Joy the Pale Blue VW Campervan outside the Grand Pacific Hotel in Lorne

Side on view of Pale Blue Camper

What I've realised from these last two posts is that I like shooting random shots of VW campervans. Yes I know, I know. So... I think I'm going to get myself a tweet frog account or whatever you call it and post pictures live to the Camperbug twitter and Facebook pages!