Beauty and uncertainty

Day 19: Sydney… we hope!

Today, we had to finish up Great Ocean Drive, get back to Melbourne by noon to drop off our rental car, and make it to the airport for our afternoon flight to Sydney! A little stressful, but nothing we can’t handle!

We got up before dawn and headed out on our drive as soon as we saw the sun rising over the ocean outside our window. The sunrise was fabulous. We stopped at a couple of lookouts, saw waterfalls, drove through the rainforest, and generally tried to get through the sights on our tight schedule.

Today’s drive didn’t take as long as yesterday’s (less sights to see) and we opted not to do any hikes for lack of time. We got back to Melbourne in time to drop off our car, book a hotel in Sydney for tonight, and head to the airport for our flight.

We got to the packed airport (flights have been cancelled left, right, and centre because of this volcanic ash cloud) and just prayed that our flight would go. We checked into our flight, and waited at the airport for news. And as we feared, flights started getting cancelled around us, but this time due to “engineering” issues with our airline! Ack!

With our flight getting delayed and delayed and delayed, we started getting really worried. At one point, they even started boarding our flight, but then actually “unboarded” it because of issues with the plane! Then, they cancelled the Sydney flight after ours, and another couple of flights around the country as well. We were ready to leave Melbourne, but couldn’t!

Finally, after the two remaining flights took off, the last announcement of the night came. Our flight was… a go! As soon as they opened that gate, we ran onto the tarmac and rushed the plane before they could change their mind!

And, thankfully, we did take off. Since we were so late arriving in Sydney, we were also thankful we already had a hotel booked for the night and didn’t have to search for one! We got to our hotel, dropped off our stuff, had some dinner in Chinatown, and went back to pass out, yet again, right before vowing to spend tomorrow doing nothing, or close to it.

Sunrise over the coast

 Sandstone rock formation

Great Ocean Drive

Day 18: Great Ocean Road

We’re both not feeling too well, so we decided to take it easy this morning and leave at a leisurely pace. Great Ocean Road is a 300km drive along the coast near Melbourne, with spectacular views and sights to see along the way. The “mountains” are actually limestone and sandstone stack formations that have eroded over millions of years, sometimes leaving pieces of these formations in the middle of the ocean like lone pillars.

We started the drive in Warrnambool itself, with a visit to the ocean and the soft, soft sands on the beach, where the whales come to calve during the winter, and which is also one of the many surfer spots along the coast. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to see any whales (but we did see surfers) and we couldn’t stay too long, since we had a lot of driving to do today.

We moved on and stopped at beautiful lookouts along the drive, seeing gorgeous beaches and formations in the waters all along the coast. We were so happy to be back in nature!

When we stopped at an information centre part of the way in to find out what there was to see, we were told we would need days to see everything (which we didn’t have)! So we rushed out of there, and decided to see as much as we could and get as far as we could on the drive before sundown. We rushed to some spectacular sights, and spent some time by the ocean at sundown before deciding to call it a day. In about 10 hours spent driving today, we only covered about 170km of the 300km drive (not including the extra 150km it will take to get to Melbourne)! There were just so many things we wanted to enjoy!

Finally, we drove through rainforests out to a small town and decided to break there for the night. We roamed various hotels and motels for rates and chose one with a view of the ocean (which we didn’t see because it was night)! We had dinner and just relaxed. More driving tomorrow!

Our little rock stack (we're building them everywhere!)

A cove, a sandstone formation, and the ocean

A formation aptly named London Bridge 

(it fell down about 20 yrs ago, stranding two people on the remaining island

- they were saved a few hours later)

Tasmania... um, no

Day 17: Great Ocean Drive

We checked out of our hotel this morning around 5am and lugged out to the airport. When we tried to check in for our flight, we were sent to the customer service desk, where we were told that our flight was cancelled. Why, you may ask? Apparently, a volcano erupted in Chile a week ago, and the volcanic ash has drifted over the Atlantic Ocean, over Africa, over the Indian Ocean, and over the Pacific to create a cloud over southern Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand. Umm, ok.

After being at a loss about what to do, we decided to go back to our hotel, uncheck out, and at least sleep a few more hours before figuring out what the heck to do! The hotel was nice enough to give us our room back. We slept for a few hours, re-checked out, left our bags there, and decided to look for a car to rent to salvage what we could of the day.

We found a car (and on the way, free internet hotspots!) and decided to head out on our last sight to see around Melbourne. Since our plans were kind of thwarted, we were kind of stressed out. We tried to book some other stuff and finally decided to avoid Tasmania for now, finish up our Melbourne trip, and go to Sydney in two days, instead. We booked our flight out to Sydney, and since we were getting such a late start out of Melbourne, booked a hotel for tonight in a town at the end of Great Ocean Drive so we could start the drive backwards to Melbourne tomorrow. 

The drive was mostly in the dark so we didn’t see much – our goal was just to get out to Warrnambool so we could sleep well tonight and do the drive tomorrow. 

(no pics on this post - didn't do anything today!)