Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road

I arrived in Melbourne to typically good Australian summer weather. The sky was blue and it was in the high 30s. I spent the day wandering around town and getting myself acquainted with the city. It is an absolutely beautiful city and I really love it here. As you all know, I'm not a city person, so this is no small praise. It is terribly expensive though, and it makes me wonder how the Aussies can make ends meet.

Brian arrived in the afternoon and we went out for a lovely dinner. We have been somewhat hard-pressed to find any night life here - we know that it's out there somewhere, but it doesn't seem to be congregated in one spot like it is at home, so you have to know where you're going. So far, we haven't figured it out.

We spent the next day exploring on our own. I headed down to St. Kilda which is a suburb right on the coast. There is a lovely beach there, as well as a pier and some cute shops. It was very busy as we're in the middle of summer holidays here, but it was a great way to spend the afternoon.

The next day we picked up our rental car to head out to the Great Ocean Road. Basically as soon as we got into the car, the clouds started rolling in and the weather took a change for the worse. Despite the cloud cover, it stayed hot that day (38 or so) and we were able to get some nice views of the coast. We arrived in Lorne about mid-afternoon where we had a room booked. Given the high season, and the fact that this was the busiest weekend of the year, we had to book a minimum of 3 nights, so decided to make Lorne our home base. We took a look around town and then drank some wine and had some dinner on the balcony outside our room. We went into town and found the "happening" place at the Lorne hotel. We ended up partying with an Australian couple who approached us in the bar as we were the only other ones there over the age of 20. They had us doing Jagermeister shooters in no time and we spent a great evening dancing and generally having a laugh (and working on headaches for the next day).

The next day was the great "Pier to Pub" swim in Lorne. This is an annual event much like the Hope beach volleyball tournament or the race weekend is at home. 4500 people swim from the pier to the pub, a distance of about 1.2 kms. The race takes place in several heats over the course of the day, so the beach and town were packed all day. The day was still hot, but the clouds were low and the rain started shortly after lunch. We watched some of the races and then napped through the afternoon rain (needed to get that Jagermeister out of our systems). We joined the post-race party at the outdoor bar on top of the Lorne hotel in the pouring rain. Once again we were the oldest people in the place, but this time didn't meet any other ancient couples so the evening was mostly spent people-watching. (I have to admit, there were lots of people there worth watching!!!!) Just as it was getting dark the clouds cleared and we could see the stars so we were hopeful for good weather for the next day. By the time we got back to our room it was raining again.

We set off the next morning to explore more of the coast but due to the rain, cloud and wind the views were dismal. Over the course of the first hour or so on the road the temperature dropped from 19 to 13 so we weren't really tempted to get out of the car too often. The one exception was about 10 minutes of sunshine at the 12 Apostles, which is a very cool rock formation just off the coast in the sea. We nearly froze to death, but at least were able to see the spectacular scenery in a bit of sunshine. We took an inland road back to Lorne through the Otway National Park and were able to get out of the car long enough to complete a 2-km hike through the woods to a waterfall. It was a very pretty walk, and in fact the drive through the park was also spectacular.

We had a quiet last evening in Lorne and headed back to Melbourne today. The road that we had hoped to take back was closed so unfortunately we missed out on a couple of things we had wanted to see. We dropped the car off at the rental agency and within about half and hour the clouds parted and the sun came out. The sky is now blue with expected beautiful weather for the next few days. I guess the gods just weren't smiling on us this time.

We'll spend this evening in Melbourne and Brian flies out in the morning for Sydney and then Ottawa. I'll head back out to the other Brian's tomorrow afternoon.