After being kept awake through the night by another group member snoring, both of us were fairly tired. The early start was also slightly shattering, this morning 6:15am we were up and having breakfast. We left the hostel and drove to another sight along the coast Loch Ard Gorge, thus named beause of a shipwreck over 150 years ago involving a ship called the Loch Ard, where only 2 people survived. This morning however, it was much calmer, and very picturesque as the sun rose behind us shining it's light onto the rock formations and caves.
We drove inland for an hour to the Otway Fly, a treetop walk through dense rainforest. As we started the walk we went at ground level through the rainforest of ferns and mountain ash, before climbing up the elevated platforms that towered 25 metres above the forest. It gave you a great chance to appreciate the forest and the many forms of wildlife that lived there. We even had the chance to climb the 47 metre spiral tower, which you could feel swaying as you looked out of the canopy from the top.
Lunch today was at a seaside town called Apollo Bay, where we sat overlooking the beach having our food before wandering around the small town.
Our drive along the east stretch of the GOR took us to Kennett River, home to a large population of wild Koalas. After snapping away with the camaras we jumped back on the bus to drive to Split Point Lighthouse, famous not for it's role in guarding the 'shipwreck coastline', but for it's staring role in Mad Max and Round the Twist!
Next stop was Bells Beach, which was closed thanks to the largest surf competition in the world the Ripcurl ProSurf competition. Jason managed to talk his way into the carpark however, so we could atleast take a glimpse from view point at what all the fuss was about - sadly though due to there being poor surf that day we could only look at an empty beach and the flat ocean!
After a quick stop in Torquay for a wander around the surf shops (this after all was home to Ripcurl and Billabong), we were back on the bus for our final drive of the trip into the bustling city of Melbourne.
As we headed into Melbourne late that evening we soon realised this was definitely the biggest City we had been in so far. As we were dropped at our hostel in the centre of town and checked in the time had ran away - so we decided to eat in the hostel bar where there was cheap pizzas and cheap beer! So, at 9pm we tucked into a delicious pizza each and had our cheapest beer of the Aussie leg of the RTW trip - nice!
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