The Great Ocean Road, part 2.

Near Mt. Gambier there is a lake, created by a volcanic eruption about 4800 years ago. Every November, the water turns bright blue. In our photo's it's not quite as blue as it gets.

Left side view.

Right side view.

So the lake is really a crater. (Click photo for much bigger picture)

Water is now coming in through layers of rock, also fed through a sink hole. (Click photo for much bigger picture)

Read more about this magnificent lake on Wikipedia.

We also saw a few large wind mill parks creating beautiful environment friendly energy.

When entering the state of South Australia, you are kindly asked to leave all your fruit and other potentially dangerous organic matter behind in the designated bin. They do this to prevent from certain fruit flies etc.

After getting rid of one whopper of an orange, we drove on.

Passing Canola fields...

And vineyards.

We stopped almost every 200 kilometres to fill up the tank. Not that it was empty, but just to make sure we wouldn't run out of petrol. Never know how long you'll be without petrol pump in this country. I also cleaned the windshield at these occasions. There were a LOT of insects...

And then we drove on again until we arrived at our little castle again. It's good to be home.

The Great Ocean Road, part 1.

Early morning, when we woke up to leave the hotel, we spotted these hot air balloons outside. They were very lucky with the weather.

After we left Melbourne and Geelong behind us we could finally start our Great Ocean Road drive. The first stop would be Bells beach. This beach is famous for surfing. It was also featured in some movie(s). There is a look out point. This is the view to the right.

A closer look reveals a bunch of surfers.

Looking to the left shows even more surfers. Black seems to be the fashion these days.

There is always one...

The waves were not too big I think. A lot of the surfers seemed to be waiting for that one perfect wave. It was cool to see them ride the waves though.

We drove on and encountered very different views but all equally beautiful.

We had lunch in a town called Lorne. Really nice place with a good atmosphere.

You say Great Ocean road, you say 12 Apostles. While you're there, why not check out what everybody talks about. It's a bunch of rocks. Big rocks. They kinda stand out. Some have collapsed so there are only about 7 left I believe.

Here's another two. They even do commercial flights in helicopters so you can see them from the air. It was nice to see but I can't say I was awed or anything. When we drove on, we actually saw another 50 rocks like these but a bit smaller further up the coast.

Another stunning view. Every now and again you pass a place where a little river comes in to the ocean. Intriguing, exciting and beautiful. Sweet water comes in to the salt water. You never really see a river flowing over the beach. Well, I haven't seen it before.

There were also places where you drive through bits of rain forest. Stunning. No manicuring here. 100% wild growth.

And then we saw this swampy area. Lots of cows. it looked like The NL! A Dutchie must've settled here when it was still a lake and thought "Hey, I can pump this water out!". Again, intriguing.

Often it looked a lot like Ireland. And I mean a LOT.