Great Ocean Road

The London Bridge

Our last excursion during our time in Australia was to drive the Great Ocean Road on our way back to Melbourne from Uluru.  This is a 151 mile long road along the south coast, just west of Melbourne.  The first part of the drive was quite dramatic – lots of tall cliffs and arches with great ocean views.   One of the first formations we saw is the London Bridge.  It used to be two arches side by side, with one connected to the mainland, until one day in 1990 the arch closest to the mainland collapsed, stranding two tourists who were on top of the second arch, which was now an island in the sea.  That must have been scary for them, wondering if the second arch they were standing on was going to collapse too!  They were eventually rescued by helicopter.  We also saw the famous twelve apostles, which appeared quite dramatic in the fog/haze.  I don’t think we could take a bad picture of them – they were so beautiful.    

The Twelve Apostles

That area is also known as Shipwreck Coast – we learned that over a 40 year time span, 80 ships wrecked on that 75 mile stretch of Australia (most of them took place in the 1800’s).  Back then navigating that area was difficult due to numerous barely hidden reefs and frequent heavy fog.  Daron and I hiked to Wreck Beach, a little out of the way spot where two anchors from old shipwrecks were located.  It was a little eerie because we were the only people there.  Walking along the beach you could see how treacherous the reef could be.

While driving out to a lighthouse we discovered a colony of koalas!  They were sitting in the crooks of the gum trees, just being their lazy selves!  Some had little ones with them - they were so cute!  One adult koala was even in the crook of a tree branch that was hanging right over the road!  They definitely didn’t seem to be too concerned with us – I think they knew they were safe so high up in the gum trees!

Old anchor on Wreck Beach

Of course after seeing them I was curious about koalas and had to find out more.  The koala is a marsupial (like the kangaroo) and fills the same ecological role as the sloth of South America.  This makes sense after seeing them – they are the most laid-back, lazy things I’ve ever seen!  The brain of the koala is extremely small, like two shriveled walnut halves floating in a brain cavity filled with fluid (they do look completely spaced out).  It is thought that the koala’s brain shrank over time due to a diet low in energy and nutrients (the body needed the energy more than the brain did).  They used to live in the rainforest; as the climate cooled the eucalypts covered most of Australia and the koala adapted to its new environment.  Eucalyptus leaves are high in fiber but low in nutrients.   In fact, eucalyptus leaves are toxic to most species.  The koala’s digestive system is specially adapted to detoxify the poisonous chemicals in the leaves, although it takes a lot of energy to do this.  In order to conserve energy the koala sleeps a lot, up to 16 hours a day!  The aborigines noticed that the koala doesn’t drink water (it gets what it needs from the gum leaves), and their name for the koala translates as “doesn’t drink.”   Interestingly, the koala is one of the few mammals (besides primates) that have fingerprints.  Their fingerprints are very similar to ours.  When the Europeans first saw the koala, they called it a koala “bear” because it seemed similar to a bear, but in reality the koala is nothing like a bear – in fact, its closest relative is the wombat (which is another Aussie animal we wanted to see but never got the chance, except as roadkill).

Lazy koala!

We wrapped up our trip on the Great Ocean Road with a visit to Bells Beach, which is well known in the surfing world for its powerful break.  It is where Patrick Swayze’s character in the movie Point Break went to surf at the end of the movie during a big storm.  We saw a few surfers the day we were there (it was a beautiful blue sky day); the waves were big but not too impressive. We ended our drive at Melbourne, where we awaited our flight to New Zealand.

 I can’t believe our time in Australia is coming to an end!