Day 4 - Hey, this isn't the Great Ocean Road

We were up and at 'em early Thursday morning.  The plan for the day was to take a leisurely drive along the Great Ocean Road.  The rental depot where we were to pick up our car (we're doing the best we can to high roll it, but no driver for us for a 200 kilometer drive), was by the Queen Victoria Market.  A little history.  It was built on a former cemetary.  In the late 1800's they established the market by the cemetary and had to move a handful of graves.  In the 19teens, the marketwas so popular and had grown so much that it took an act of Parliament to grant tthe removal of a few more graves to make room for the growing market.  a few more graves meaning about 10,000.  There a knock-off Steven Spielberg movie in there somewhere.   

What a market its is.  Around a 1,000 stalls.  All kinds of produce, fruits and veg, one wing of a meat and fish market where you can buy kangaroo, wallaby, all kinds of seafood, along with beef and chicken.  Speaking of chickens, they are having a big push to eliminate cage raised chicks, so all kinds of free range eggs are available, not cheap, but available.  And, going in line with the diverse culture here, all kinds of ethnic shops in the market.  While St. Louis couldn't hope to match the size of the market, we would be ashamed to compare ours in any way to this one.  You could spend all day there.

As we were leaving to pick up the rental car.  Rene stopped by the Chemist to pick up the Aussie equivalent to Dramamine, because the "M" in Rene M. Seabaugh stands for "Motion Sickness".

So, we get to the rental depot and pick up the car.  A nice Nissan Altima.  Noticing there wasn't a map other than a Melbourne city map within 100 meters of the depot, we added a GPS at an extra $14.99/day, though I was confident that the Google Maps app on my phone would work.  Never want to be unprepared, plus I needed all the help I could get to drive through the middle of the CBD (central business district) of a city of almost 4.5 million when I had been there all of three days.

In Australia, they drive on the left side of the road and the driver's side is on the opposite side of the car from what we are used to.  It really isn't all that difficult, just remind yourself to stay to the left So, as I pull out of the parking space and start to go down the ramp to the street, it was good for Rene to remind me I was driving down the right side of the ramp, apparently ignoring the sign conveniently reminding the drivers to "Keep Left".

Oh.  Yeah.  I knew that.  I had driven 50 meters and was already driving on the wrong side of the, well, ramp.  I hadn't even gotten to the street yet.  

We get out on the street and things are really going well.  Mostly because Rene is gently reminding me every 13 seconds to stay to the left, no idea why she would be doing that, and I am making the first turn in busy late morning traffic (a right), among many students rushing off to class at RMIT, oblivious to how much danger they were putting themselves in.  So, I go to use my turn signal, and promptly turn on the windshield wipers.  They didn't tell me the turn signal was on the right side of the steering column and the windshield wipers were on the left.  It was less than 1 kilometer from the depot back to our hotel to pick up our bags.  One lane change, two more right turns and one left.  And  four more times I turned on the windshield wipers - alternating intermittent, regular and fast.  Oh, and it didn't stop there, no sir.  Had to drive around the block to head out of town and turned them on four more times.  Last time I turned them on was getting on the freeway.  But we had the cleanest windshield in Melbourne as we left.

As we got out of the city, we were back in the rolling hills and passed by the You Yangs Park where we were the day before.  We were feeling pretty good about this trip and even though we knew we were going to be going through curving roads, we were just going to take our time and enjoy all the majestic views.

Even the GPS lady had a nice Aussie accent.  She was taking out to Apollo Bay as we drove right by the sign on the freeway that said "Great Ocean Road".  And that b**ch didn't say a word.  Not one.  So, what do you do when you're in a country you never been in before and the new technology is showing you have not deviated off course, but you gut tells you to turn around and go back?  Well, that was kind of taken out of our hands because there was construction on the highway and no obvious place for a Yank to turn around.  Plus, we weren't off track.  At least the GPS said so until we were a good 15 kilometers down the road, on our little purple track and we hear "Recalculating".  You can't make this stuff up.  No map.  I'm afraid to pull over because all I'm going to do is turn on the windshield wipers and get us killed in the construction zone, so even though our little Aussie lady has already done us bad, we let her recalculate instead throwing her out of the window as I would have made a Bat Turn to retrace my steps when I was a much younger man, $340 for the lost GPS be damned. So, she recalculates and has driving through beautiful and almost pristine farmland.  Australia, or southern Australia, is a big granite rock, so it reminds me some of the mineral area of southeast Missouri that can be pretty, rolling hills, forests, a lot of grass farming - and winding through the Otway National Park.  The flora and fauna is different, obviously.   If you can find an ocean anywhere in these pictures, we'll give you $100.  See for yourself.

So, we're not seeking what we have been told is one of the great scenic drives in the country, if not the world.  No biggie, we will just enjoy the beauty of the Otway National Forest and trust the our GPS lady has gotten her game on.  And then she tells us to turn right on Old Dog Road.  Ok then.

Yep.  That's it.  15 kilometers of a one lane dirt and gravel road up and down and all around.  And there is no turning back.  Because if you would have been foolish enough to try to do that, not that it would have been one in a line of rather foolish mistakes we had made this afternoon, which by the way we both knew without hesitation was Thursday, May 15 in our part of the world, but this rather foolish mistake may have killed us because the only way to turn around that Altima was to fling it several hundred feet down the side of a hill.  And not only would have hurt, but the lady at the Budget counter really made it clear that they would charge the entire cost of all damages to my AMEX card just because I wouldn't agree to pay the $31.99/day charge for the insurance waiver.  Well, had I done that, I may have just gotten us and all of our stuff out of the car and pushed the car 

of the side of the hill just to see how that would play out - an academic exercise.  But the good thing is that we are going so slow and taking pictures to document where we had been if we would ever have been found, Rene is not having any problems with her motion sickness because we are going somewhere between 5 and 10 kilometers an hour.

But we finally saw this.

That's the ocean.  And it has a road with all these great views.  Needless to say, we missed most of them.  But after getting to the hotel, checking in, and taking a walk on the beach (here we are)

(yes, that is my third Barmah hat, with kangaroo leather, reason #7 why I think I am an Australian at heart), we backtracked east along the Great Ocean Road.  It was at the end of the day, but I think we got some good ones.  Enjoy.

Yep.  Two surfers in the last picture.  Hard core.  The water was freezing.

We ate dinner a block from where we were staying at The Vista on the Great Ocean Road.  We had the Seafood Platter fro Two that had the usual stuff you expect on a seafood platter, but all locally sourced, and deloosh, especially the Port Fairy Bugs, a delicacy in that part of the world.

After dinner and taking our first long look at Crux, the Southern Cross, we leave you with the moon over Apollo Bay.  We had never heard of this place before, but it is one of the most beautiful places we've ever been.