Down Unduh: The Great Ocean Road & Penguins

G'day Mates! It's Sharon.  T agreed to relinquish some of his blogging powers over to me...so here I go!

The Great Ocean Road - Day 1

After our wonderful 3 week adventure in NZ, we headed over to Melbourne to start our 2 week exploration of Australia.  As soon as we landed at the Melbourne airport we picked up our rental car, a Holden Commodore, and started our journey on the Great Ocean Road.  We had gotten up at 3am that morning to catch our 6am flight so shortly after we started our drive, we pulled over to a beach to take a much needed nap.  It was great to wake up from our nap to this...

 We made our way to  Apollo Bay, a cute little beach town about midway through the drive.  After checking out a few hostel options that were on the lower end of the budget, we gave in and decided to spend a few extra bucks to stay at the YHA (Youth Hostel Association).  It was so worth it.  This was by far one of the nicest and most eco friendly hostels I've seen so far.  We were still pretty tired from our day of travel so we got a quick bite to eat at a local pub and called it a night.

  
The Great Ocean Road - Day 2

The next morning we got an early start and made our way to see the Twelve Apostles that are some pretty cool limestone stacks along the coast.  There aren't really twelve of them, but I guess it wouldn't sound as cool if they were called the Six Apostles.

One apostle...

...two, three, four, five, six...WTH!  We've been jipped!

I had read about a place called CheeseWorld in the Lonely Planet guide that was supposed to be near by so we decided to check it out. I was really excited about all the possibilities of what CheeseWorld would be like.  Would it be a cheese themed amusement park with cheese fountains, cheese games, and make  your own cheese stations?  Sadly, it didn't even come close to what I had hoped for.  It turned out to be just an average cheese shop.  I was disappointed at first, but once T bought me some goat cheese from the shop, I was all smiles again.

After CheeseWorld we drove to a very cute town called Port Fairy.   There was a great walk along a beach where we made our way yet again to a lighthouse.  Our fourth one in a one month period and second one in a 24 hour period.  At this point I'm kind of over lighthouses, but if T can put up with my cheese obsession, I suppose I can deal with his minor interest in lighthouses.

Do you see the lighthouse in the distance?

On our way back to the hostel we decided to pull over and watch the sunset.  It was pretty awesome to see the sunset while the moon was full right behind us.

Setting sun...

...full moon, at the same time!  Crazy!

Koalas and Phillip Island Penguins- Day 3

The next day we got an early start because we had a date with some koalas and penguins.  Our first stop was to see some koalas.  We stopped at a small town called Kennett River, and walked a bit up this winding dirt road and before you know it you look up and there are Koalas scattered all around.  Ted was pretty excited.

The view while walking up to see the Koalas.

Koala Bear.

After the koalas T put on his lead foot so we could make it all the way to Philip Island so we could see some penguins.  After several hours of driving, an hour ferry, and a few more hours of driving, we finally made it to the "Penguin Parade".  

It's Ted here again as Sharon wanted to pass the baton since she didn't want to write about the Penguins.  Anyways...Philip Island is home to thousands of penguins and every night hundreds of them come back after days of fishing in the ocean to return to their sand dune burrows on the island.  So right before sunset we and hundreds of other tourists went out to these viewing platforms just off the beach to watch the penguins come in.  At first you could see only a few penguins coming out of the surf, but as it got darker and darker, wave after wave of penguins (50 to 100 at a time) would emerge from the water and waddle their way up the beach and right past the viewing platforms.  It was pretty damn cool, and in my opinion, the penguins were damn cute.  These penguins are the smallest species of penguin in the world, so they kind of looked like baby penguins, which made them even cuter.  Sharon thought one by itself looked cute, but in a group they kind of reminded her of rodents and it grossed her out a bit.  I personally thought the more the merrier.  Unfortunately they didn't allow us to take any photographs, and since Sharon (Miss Goody Two Shoes) didn't allow me to sneak any pics, the best I could do was a photograph of a poster that was in the gift shop.

Not bad for a photo of a poster, eh?

They also warned us before heading back to our cars to be sure to look under your car first before driving off just in case a penguin might be under it.  Unfortunately, there was no penguin under our car.

I soooo wanted to find a penguin under our car.

That's it for now.  Stay tuned for Melbourne and our trip to an Australian cattle farm.