Swish, swish, swish. My windshield wipers had been going for thirty seconds now only succeeding in smearing dust across the glass of my blue Ford Falcon and providing strobe-like lapses in sunlight.
Tick, tick. Nope, that’s the right blinker.
Tick. Nope, that’s the left blinker. As if learning to drive on the left side of the road from the right side of the car through Melbourne’s one-way streets, skinny alleyways and traffic-heavy grid wasn’t hard enough, they had to complicate matters even further by switching the blinkers and windshield wipers. Some kind of sick joke, if you ask me.
Swish, swish, swish. It wasn’t even a matter of mechanics anymore; those two skinny black blades were mocking me.
Moments earlier, I had been spit out of an underground parking lot in the heart of Melbourne for my crash course in Aussie driving. I surfaced disoriented and hyperventilating as cars sped through the laneways and made left hand turns on red. Not surprisingly, I thought I was going to die.
Once I had gotten the windshield wiper situation under control and my GPS decided to finally connect to satellites, I turned in the right direction and it was off to the open road, first stop: Torquay.
The beach town of Torquay wears its heritage proud with the largest surfing museum in the world called, well, Surfworld, and is home to legendary surfing brands Quiksilver and Rip Curl. Although not disorganized, Surfworld feels like more of surfing scrapbook than a museum. After a quick tour with museum curator, Craig, it was round two of driving.
With a Filet-o-Fish in hand, I sped down the road towards Lorne. I had graduated to the confidence level of “eating while driving,” but even as I focused on that sweet, succulent fried fish smothered in tartar sauce I couldn’t help but notice the big billboard announcing “Funeral and Bereavement Services” available for cheap at the small, brown building along the side of the highway. Let's face it, if there was any time I was going to need their services, it would be on this road trip.
Even though my itinerary Tourism Victoria had set up suggested a coffee break at Lorne, I whizzed past the strip of a town and continued into Apollo Bay for a lunch stop at Bimba. True to Tourism Australia form, the time allotted for each stop was insufficient and reluctantly took my Bimba burger for the road. I wasn’t really hungry anyway and knew it would come in handy as the trip progressed, plus it made my car smell a delicious bbq and bacon.
* * *
When I approached Tourism Victoria a week prior to ask for a hand in setting up this trip, I had two objectives. I wanted to see the famed Southern Coast of Victoria made famous by its winding road and the 12 Apostles and I wanted to make a stop at the Great Ocean Ecolodge and Conservation Center, a five-room, fully sustainable property on the edge of the Great Otway National Park that doubles as a research station and animal hospital.
In 2004, Lizzie Corke and husband Shayne Neal opened up the Conservation Center shortly followed by the Great Ocean Ecolodge. The property is a vast landscape of rolling hills for grazing and dense forest punctuated with the small two-story building.
As I walked through the grass with Lizzie and Shayne kangaroos sunbathed in front of massive solar panels supplying 100 per cent of the power to the property. Rain water was caught and stored for every day use and a new herb garden was being cultivated in a patch in the back of the Center.
It seemed as soon as I arrived that my allotted hour was up and had to jump back in my blue bullet and head to the poster boys of the Great Ocean Road, the 12 Apostles. Years ago, water and wind eroded these striped golden rocks from the sheer cliff faces creating pillared sentinels just off shore. Now, the helicopter pilot told me, they are the second most visited site in Australia next to the Great Barrier Reef.
Wha? Helicopter pilot you say? Yes.
The propellers thudded as we climbed above the coastline and the Great Ocean Road, now just a small strip of black weaving along the blue water. Although not the best time for photo ops, flying above the rugged coastline is the only way to grasp the sheer magnitude of nature at its finest. Here, above mere mortals, the coastline appeared etched out by an exacto-knife creating caverns and inlets – a sailing ship’s worst nightmare.
Back on the ground we waited for sunset and the perfect shot which, evidently never came. The way to see it was at sunrise. Battling windy 40 degree weather, I set up shop between a couple who were driving back to Melbourne from the Murray River and a guy who used to work in camera retail on his way back to Perth. Together probably experienced the slowest sunrise ever.
As per my itinerary, I couldn’t wait for the sun to completely light up the front of the pillars, but before I hit the road, I managed to pull off this shot. Beautiful pinks melt into the clear blue waters that wrap around golden blocks of rock. Even though my hands were numb, it was a beautiful morning. (Looks even cooler not on Blogspot)
Port Fairy looked like a 1970s beach town. The entire town was only about the length of a block with little shops and diners lining the quiet town. It was the type of town where everyone seemed to know everyone else. It almost seemed like small town America – the type of place where everyone gathered on a Friday night to watch an outdoor movie or had an old-school rock concert at the State Theater with poodle skirts and slicked back hair.
Needless to say, besides the two whales wandering around the bay, Port Fairy was a nice stopping point, but nothing more than that. So, some 400 plus kilometers later, it was time to go home. I had seen what I wanted to see along one of Australia most famous highways. I had braved the left side of the road and completed the stretch of winding blacktop even few Australians have experienced.
As I departed Port Fairy there was a sense of awe for the road behind me; four hundred kilometers of what must have been one of the most tedious road projects in Australian history.
As Port Fairy faded into the distance, I merged back onto the highway and turned my windshield wipers on.
(The moon descends into the ocean at the 12 Apostles)
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