Great Ocean Road

Hey, it’s not the first time I’ve ever been on the Great Ocean Road, I mean I’ve lived in Melbourne for over thirty years, that’d be crazy, but this time I actually went down to see the Twelve Apostles as well (that was a first). Unfortunately I was the one driving so I couldn’t really enjoy the scenery as much winding along the beautiful coastal road. From Melbourne we stopped in Lorne for a break, and Apollo Bay for lunch (word of advice, don’t bother going to La Bimba, let’s just call them Lord of the Flies) before reaching our destination of Port Campbell National Park to see the Twelve Apostles, which is just a name, they’re actually just big limestone stacks in the sea, not the apostles of Jesus Christ, also, there aren’t twelve of them.

Twelve Apostles with a chopper

It’s a lot of driving in one day, I would definitely say too much for one day, take a night at least cos there’s plenty to see down there and if you don’t want to see anything, just go and relax on the beach, it’s nice. Leaving at about 8.30am we didn’t arrive at the national park until about 3.30pm (that’s including lunch of course but still), and then we only spent an hour or two there, I would have preferred to see the stacks at sunset, sunrise, or any time in between as the light would have been a lot less harsh and much more conducive to some artsy photography (cos that’s what I do).

It was actually a really nice day, very sunny but not too hot (I did manage to get sun burnt a little), stupidly none of us remembered to take sunscreen so let that be a lesson to you. Yeah, I was very impressed by the scenery, and will go back one day but definitely staying overnight so that I can pay a visit at a time more conducive (I can’t believe I used that word twice in one post!) to clearer photos and less tourists, more towards twilight and after sunset and before sunrise for those sweet long exposures.

The other thing is, we didn’t even visit London Bridge or Loch Ard Gorge so there’s plenty more for me to see definitely and to photograph, next time I’ll go on my own terms :D. We took the inland road back to Melbourne which only took about 3.5 hours and with pretty much no traffic is probably the way to go (to avoid the stress of traffic jams), but there are a lot of lookout points on the road, so if driving towards sunset, it might be worth it. I took my big tripod and didn’t even use it, so I reckon that’s going to get some heavy use next time. I’ve got another post lined up for next week or whenever I’m bored next but after that I don’t know, haven’t seen Anchorman 2 yet, would like to, will have to see if I can make it.