On the Road Again

There were two tours I’d booked when I was back in New Zealand. Two places I wanted to see. Well, there were three, but I had seen that back when I was in Melbourne 13 years ago(!). The Great Ocean Road, Penguin Parade, and a Chocoholics Chocolate Tour. We saw the Twelve Apostles on The Great Ocean Road 13 years ago, though all I remember was my Mum telling me off when I waved to another person’s camera. (I was copying my cheeky cousins. Only they were clever, and only did it when their parents weren’t looking.) I remembered The Penguin Parade rather vividly, because I thought it was Incredibly Rude of the mumma penguins to snub the kids that weren’t theirs.

Kid Penguin	Mummy! Mummy!
Mumma Penguin	Fuck off brat, you ain’t my kid.
Mumma Penguin	turns her back on the kid penguin, waddles off

Today was my tour of The Great Ocean Road. While the start wasn’t any earlier than when I’d been ordinarily getting up while I was here, 6:15am, my dinner with Tully last night meant I got to bed a bit later than normal. After a shower, some cereal, and a slice of gingerbread, I headed off to the pickup point for my tour.

My pickup was at 7:20am, and I, as I seem to be doing quite a bit lately, overestimated the amount of time it would take to walk there. I was around the corner from the pickup point at 7am and already was thinking, “Great. What on earth am I going to do for 20 minutes at THIS time in the morning?”

Fortunately for me, the GoWest tour bus was already there – the driver had his newspaper open and was having a read while waiting for me. He let me in and I picked a single seat on the left hand side of the bus near the front. I was a bit tired and tend to want to sponge out and do nothing in particular whenever I’m on these tours. It was always good doing these tours with my Mum, since she would do the Polite Conversation thing with the driver and anyone else around us, while my brother and I became slobs. I found it more difficult to slob out when I was the only one who could do the conversation-ing.

We went around from hotel to hotel, picking up all of the other participants on the tour. Like with the runs I’d been on, I loved seeing the city at dawn, and being on the bus meant that I got to see parts of the city that I hadn’t explored before.

When we got to the last hotel, there were two girls who needed to get on the bus. Yet, somehow, there was only one seat left. The driver started scratching his head, and dived into his paperwork and started doing a roll call. Throughout his investigation, he found one Japanese guy who was unaccounted for. When he asked him where he was supposed to be, the guy panicked, and ran out of the bus. The driver called out after him, saying, “It’s okay, we’ll take you to where you need to go!”, yet the guy just zoomed off down the road. It was HILARIOUS. We first began hypothesising as to how the guy got on the bus in the first place. The driver had only looked away from the bus for about five minutes to go around the corner to fetch a couple of members of the group. Apparently at that point, the guy just hopped on the bus. He must’ve seen the penguins on the bus and went, “Ooh! Penguins! I’ll take some of that!” and jumped on.

I mean, WHAT?!

Naturally, that put us behind schedule a bit, and the driver was sure to let us know that. He said that he was going to push us through the first half of the day very quickly to ensure that we got to spend as much time on The Great Ocean Road as possible. The first few hours of the drive was on the freeway, and I soaked up as much of the driveby scenery as I could. In other words, I well and truly SPONGED. My parents warned me that this tour would be the most exhausting day of the trip; a 13 hour day. While it was going to be a long day, I was enjoying the sitting down. I’d spent the last two days on my feet, walking around, going back to my hotel room with sore ankles.

I was more than happy to spend the first couple of hours on my arse staring out the window at scenes like this.

And naturally, while I’m not an avid AFL watcher (they screen a big highlights package on pay TV in New Zealand every Tuesday when the season is in progress), as a tribute to Tully, I took a wee video when we drove past Kardinia Park, the home of the Geelong Cats. Some of you might remember her rather… vigorous… celebrations when they won the championship last year. I promptly texted Tully as we went on past and her reply was instantaneous and rather predictable. “Go Cats!”

Yeah okay I know that the quality of the video is shit and you can’t really see much but I’m being the best blogger I can, aight?

As we went along, I started to get thirsty. Lucky for me, not long after, we stopped at an aboriginal cultural centre, no doubt to try and get us to shove some money in their direction, in exchange for a bit of an aboriginal cultural lesson. In the centre there was artwork, aboriginal weapons, didgeridoos, mock ups of traditional aboriginal homes.

I appreciated the stop, and tried to politely listen to the presentation given by Kirsty, a trainee presenter in aboriginal culture and history. I did enjoy looking at the weapons. Spears, boomerangs, clubs with insane knobby bits at the end for a more thug-like ass-kicking experience, oh my.

And there was the two-headed didgeridoo.

We were given a bit of time to wander around. Though there wasn’t much to see. Of course, it was trying to give us enough time to spend our money in the gift shop. Instead, I tried to spend as much time wandering around outside, and I spotted a couple of big stones with aboriginal artwork drawn onto it.

A nice touch, I thought.

Because didgeridoos are not permitted to be played by females, our driver got one of the guys who works at the centre to play for us.

Male or female, playing that fucker is WAY harder than it looks. You have to be able to master a particular form of blowing out and breathing in at the same time. (?!!??!)

We moved on, our next stop, Bells Beach, near the small surfing township of Torquay.

It really was beautiful. Though the driver had really hammered home to us that he wanted everything in the morning to go quickly so that we could take more advantage of the spectacular sights on The Great Ocean Road.

He must have been used to tourists not listening to him. He said very urgently that we were only going to spend 10 minutes at Bells Beach before moving on. 8 minutes after we stopped, all of us were sitting back on the bus, and the driver was shocked. "What?! Are you guys sure you're not from the French Legion or something? You all ACTUALLY listen to me!"

From there, he began hyping everyone up by talking about the greatest man made structure on the planet. The structure that would have us tearing up our postcards of the Arc De Triomphe, The Great Wall of China, and The Golden Gate Bridge.

Oh yes, the structure of all structures, we bring to you...

...The Great Ocean Road Memorial Archway.

TA-DA!!!

Climax fail?

Again, the driver asked us to spend only 10 minutes at the archway, and 7 minutes later, we were sitting on the bus ready to head on.

We were a couple of hours away from our lunchtime stop at Apollo Bay, and saw some pretty... err... pretty, scenes along the way.

As we drove past a lookout, everyone on the bus "Oooo"-ed so much that the driver did a cheeky little reverse down the lane and back into the lookout parking area and gave us a few minutes to stop and take a photo. And hey, like always, we were prompt in getting back on the bus, so it's not like he could COMPLAIN or anything!

Before we hit Apollo Bay, we drove through an area of forest where the tops of the trees had been completely stripped bare. The driver told us that this is evidence of where Koalas live, as they eat through the best tasting leaves at the top, completely stripping the tree. He would go past the sleeping ones - all a novelty to us, who would protest as we zoomed past - saying, "Ugh, there's another BORING one", and finally, he spotted one he liked and stopped the bus.

Trust me, the grey thingey-thing sitting in that tree is a koala. And he's munching.

We got back on the bus, and didn't stop again until we were in Apollo Bay, our lunchtime stop. I ordered a Thai Chicken Burger, with the presumption that it was unhealthy. [Yeah I wanted to eat something unhealthy, dammit!] But they tricked me, and it was burger made with flaked chicken breast and thai green curry paste with heaps of veggies on a wholemeal bun. And no fries on the side. Ah bloody hell.

So after I gobbled it, I went walkabout in the final 5 minutes left in the lunchtime.

And just my luck, look at what I stumbled upon.

Another chocolateir! 'Fantastic!', I thought, 'I can continue buying chocolate everywhere I go!' Though when I walked into the shop and asked the woman which chocolates she had available. She said she had none. HUH? What kind of chocolateir has NO CHOCOLATES??? Because I felt bad, I bought a cookie and took it back onto the bus. How bizarre?

From there, we got onto the good stuff.

The Twelve Apostles...

Loch Ard Gorge...

The Razorback...

And London Bridge.

What you can't really see from the photos is how wet, cold and windy it is.

So much, that delusion began to set in.

Oh dear!

After that, it was back on the bus for a loooong bus ride back into Melbourne; the only stop being in Colac for some piping hot noodles (which went down a treat in the cold) and some awful coffee courtesy of McCafe (which has been kind to me in the past; I hope it was an isolated incident!)

It really was a great day. On a great road. Pun totally intended, and totally deserving.