May 5th, 2016

Day 37: The Great Ocean Road – Part I

We knocked on Mama & Bo’s door at 5AM for a quick goodbye hug – Igor & Lindsay are now officially on our own! We flew into the regional Avalon airport outside Melbourne, only to find out that Lindsay accidentally reserved our rental car at the main Melbourne airport – oops! Luckily we hadn’t prepaid, so after confirming there was no fee to cancel, we booked the last car in Avalon and headed out for the Great Ocean Road!

Since Igor’s favorite type of attraction is animals, our first stop was in Angelsea. The local golf course has always had a herd of kangaroos that live on the course (helping to keep the grass short!) – after years of people trespassing to take pictures, they finally started running little tours via golf cart. It was a little hokey, but a very cute stop.

 

Kangaroo tour at the Angelsea Golf Course

Good life for the kangaroos!

So far we have learned that kangaroos like vineyards & golf

We continued West along the coast, stopping whenever we had the interest: Spit PointLighthouse, a fantastic view of the road at Teddy’s Lookout, and our first sighting of koalas at Kenneth River! We could see a group of about a dozen tourists standing under some eucalyptus trees & pointing up, so we pulled off the road to see what the commotion was about. Sure enough – three koalas were eating/sleeping high in the branches.

 

View of the Spit Point Lighthouse

Trip for our first Aussie road trip, on the Great Ocean Road

Short detour to Teddy’s Lookout

Panorama of the GOR from Teddy’s Lookout – totally worth a stop!

Koalas in the trees at Kenneth River!

While that was nice to check off our list, the best part about Kenneth River was the large number of cockatoos, who were very unafraid of tourists! One of the tourist groups had been told to bring biscuits to feed the cockatoos out of your hands – boy did that work! The groups was very friendly, and offered everyone standing around a biscuit as well – there was no shortage of birds, so everyone got a picture of themselves with the wildlife.

 

Lindsay with wild cockatoos

 

Igor with wild cockatoos

 

ALL THE WILD COCKAOOS

Looking at the time, we decided we had just enough time for one more attraction before sundown, so we booked it to the Otway Lighthouse just in time for a quick climb to the top. While the lighthouse complex closed at 5PM, the lighthouse guide told us we could let ourselves out via turnstile whenever we liked, so we stayed around after everyone left the park to watch the sunset in peace.

Tour of the Otway Lighthouse

Enjoying the sunset in peace