An early start again for the drive down the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne. This road was built by returning soldiers from the First World War,the Diggers as they needed work during the Great Depression. It is now the world's longest war memorial and took over 10 years to complete. It runs along the coast and there are many scenic viewpoints along the way and few settlements. Our first stop was to view the sandstone stacks slowly eroding under the relentless waves crashing into them in an area called the bay of islands,next was the bay of martyrs where aborigines jumped to their death,then it was London Bridge which unfortunately did fall down with two people stranded on it,followed by the Loch Ard gorge ,scene of a tragic shipwreck and heroic rescue of one female which was also next door to the Razorback,a thin slice of rock and then the final stop was at the twelve apostles which give their name to this stretch of coast.
We had lunch in Apollo Bay,a pretty seaside town with a harbour and fine sandy beach . In the afternoon our first stop was to see some truly wild koalas,they were formerly rescued and have been reintroduced back into the wild.It just so happens their patch of eucalyptus trees are surrounded by a beech forest which they don't eat so they pretty much stay in the same place and are easy to spot. Our next port of call was to Maite's rest,a temperate rain forest which is completely different from the one in Queensland we went to. there were 10 foot tree ferns in a very damp steep valley with 100 metre tall beech trees towering above them.You really did expect to see as dinosaur or two lurking there. The coastal road now clung to craggy cliffs as we stopped at The Arch,a memorial to the diggers and our final stop was at Bell's beach,an iconic surfing beach which features in the denouement of the original film Point Break. We were now just over an hour away from Melbourne by motorway,our final destination of our Australian tour.