The 'Great Ocean Road' (44 kB) between Warrnambool and Torquay must be one of the biggest highlights of a trip through Australia. But also the rest of the route between Adelaide and Melbourne offers many interesting sights.
Between Meningie and Kingston, there are many salt lakes, called 'The Coorong' (46 kB), ranging over a complete length of 145 km. It was somewhere around there that our guide suddenly stopped the car and led us to a formation called 'Petrified Forest' (57 kB). This is a place where a sand dune buried a whole forest and now that the sand has gone hard, you can still see the individual trunks. After the wood had decomposed, fascinating hollow bars (78 kB) remained.
Numerous lagoons and beach lakes can be found between the scenic places Robe and Beachport. This is also
where you can see wild koalas (49 kB).
They lead a very quiet life. They spend approx. 4-5 hours a day feeding on eucalyptus leaves and the
rest of the day they are so dozed that they simply hang around in trees and doze off.
Coonawarra is home to the southernmost wine-growing area of South Australia. Visitors are welcome
at the wine cellars for wine-tasting. We stayed the night in the lovely Chardonnay Lodge
(sundown 30 kB).
In the 'Flagstaff Hill Maritime Museum' you can have a close look at various types of ships (64 kB) and a rebuilt fishing village plus two lighthouses (47 kB). Being on one of these old whaling boats (68 kB) and looking at these picturesque little houses, you feel as if you had been taken back 100 years. There is also a museum of ?? old shipwrecks.
The 300 km long Great Ocean Road means roads along a breathtaking coastline scenery with
steep cliffs and empty beaches (67 kB).
The coast used to be very dangerous to ships, therefore it was known under the name of 'Shipwreck Coast'.
The 'Loch Ard Gorge' (47 kB) was given
its name after a ship accident where 52 people lost their lives.
In a bay, rainwater, dropping through the rocks, had formed
stalagtites (61 kB) at an
overhanging rock. The formation called
'London Bridge' (36 kB) used to have a
second arch up until 1990, connecting it to the mainland. Then, one day, this arch broke for some odd
reason and was washed away in the sea. Tourists who had been on the other side of the arch on a rock
- fortuntely enough - could be rescued hours later by a helicopter. The
'Twelve Apostles' (46 kB) is yet another
spectacular rock formation. They're called Twelve Apostles, but there is no place where you may see
twelve of them at one glance.
The road leaves the coastline near Princetown and goes through the Ottway Ranges (52 kB). Very nice walks through ferns in the rain forest(70 kB) are on offer here. At a service area we were lucky to see two parrots (41 kB) which are as common yet timid.
Shortly before we got to Melbourne, we had another stop near a golf course. There were masses of kangaroos (76 kB) laying there lazily. You may come as close as 2 m to them before they start hopping slowly away.
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last update: 24.11.1999