Great Ocean Road

Off to an early start to meet our Melbourne Coastal Tour guide at Federation square. We grabbed a fresh brewed coffee Melbourne style and hopped on the mini van to explore the Great Ocean Road.

Our first stop is the Memorial Arch which is a tribute to the World War One servicemen who built the Great Ocean Road. The present arch is the third built to replace the second one destroyed in the Ash Wednesday bushfires of February 1983. There is also a beautiful beach that we strolled on.

Lorne is set between the sparkling waters of Loutit Bay in Victoria and the majesty of the Otway National Park, It is a spectacular and refreshing place, where the bush meets the beach. We drive up to Teddys Lookout to look at the beautiful coastline.

Next stop was Kennet River which is known for being one of the few places in Australia where you can actually see Koalas in the wild. Koalas have minimal energy needs because of the small size of their brains, hence they sleep up to 16 hours a day and nap a further 2 to 3 hours. We saw 4 Koalas, all of them were snuggled against eucalyptus branches and their faces were completely hidden. Not exactly a national geographic postcard pose from the Koalas (hence no pictures). I did find it interesting to learn more about this cuddly creatures. They only have a lifespan of 10-12 years and basically live on a eucalyptus tree diet. Koalas eat about 50 out of the 500 different types of eucalypt leaves but mainly manna gum, blue gum, swamp gum and red river gum. Baby Koalas (joeys) are born hairless, blind, and earless. Tiny at birth, the joey crawls into the pouch on the mother’s belly where they live for the first 6 months before they will start to spend time outside the pouch.

We also spotted wild Parakeets and cockatoo birds which was pretty cool.

Next stop will be Lunch @ Apollo bay

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