Friday, December 10, 2010

The Great Ocean Road

After the Grampians we headed towards the ocean. Along the ocean in the Australian state of Victoria, there is a highway called 'The Great Ocean Road.' It was built by soldiers when they returned from World War one, partly because they didn't have any other job for them to do. It now serves as the world's largest war memorial. There were several breath taking sites along the way.


A lot of the views are a result of erosion from the waves of the ocean. There are several lookout points where you can see large sandstone rocks sitting in the water in various shapes and sizes. A lot of them have been given nicknames. For example our first site was called the 'Bay of Martyrs.' A lot of them were named after religious things because of the settlers involved in naming them.

The picture on the left here fills up with water during high tide, and has carved a hole in the sandstone.


The one to the right here is another picture of the bay of martyrs. That is what the sign said, but there were other nick names for this place. Apparently a lot of aboriginals were killed here by being forced off a cliff here. They don't have any written information on this.







The one on the left is the London Bridge. You actually used to be able to walk along it. One couple was having a picnic the day it crumbled and they were stranded on the island piece. They needed to be rescued by a helicopter.





On the right is the 12 Apostles. It is probably the most famous and beautiful of the sites along the road. It was originally named the sow and the piglets, but someone decided to put a Christian spin on it. Originally there were 12 sandstone rocks, but a few have fallen down. There were 7 standing when I visited, one had just recently crumbled. (Actually I just double checked this fact and the one that fell wasn't considered a part of the Apostles even though everyone had said it was on the tour).


The Twelve Apostles was a great place to watch the sun set over the ocean. As you can tell from the colour of the sky there was a lot of beauty in the sun set. The top shows the pink in the sky and the one on the left shows all the orange you could see.

As the sun was going down if you looked on the beach below you could see tiny little animals emerging from the water. They were penguins. It was just light enough to see them waddle along the beach, but too dark for any of the pictures I took to turn out.

3 comments:

  1. Nice Andy, I would love to go to Australia someday. I really don't know anything about the country so this was as joy to read. Have you ever thought about going to Japan?

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  2. When I was in Korea I thought about it. It is pretty expensive though so I took a holiday in Thailand instead.

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  3. Great idea with the blog and really nice pics and descriptions of where you have traveled is really good.You may find yourself writing for a magazine or your own book someday. Layne White aka Caper

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