The Great Ocean Road

One of the must-do things near Melbourne was to drive the Great Ocean Road.  It was really beautiful the entire drive, including the parts without the sea view.  We passed through quite a lot of farmland (but didn't get any good pictures of this), and saw a ton of dairy cows and some black swans, which I thought were pretty cool.  Apparently all the swans in Australia are black, who knew?

Along the way, we stopped at a nature reserve where we saw wild kangaroos.  They reminded me a lot of wild deer, both in appearance and the way they acted as a herd.  Technically, a group of kangaroos is called a mob.

They spotted us walking up to them.  We didn't get too close to the wild ones, no petting today!

On the way there, we passed through a strip of road with koala crossing signs, and I actually saw two wild kolas hanging in the trees over the road!  Once we got there, we saw some young kolas who had been orphaned, and were being cared for until they were old enough to be released into the wild.  There was a super cute interaction between two of them.  The smaller one tried to back down from his perch, and his butt hit the head of a larger one that was sitting in the crook of the tree.  The larger one was not happy and let out a kind of scream/yelp.  The younger one paused for a second, but had no where else to go so kept moving down, at which point the larger one swatted him in the butt and tried to move him away.  He gave up and turned around as the little one continued to scoot down.  He still wasn't happy when the little one's butt hit his butt, and scooted up the branch a bit.  He was such a grump!  I guess I would be too if someone sat on my head while I was sleeping.

Yes...more kola pictures. But look how cute his hairy little ears are, blowing in the wind!

Eventually the bigger one calmed down as the littler one settled in for a snack.

He was so cute while he was eating!

The biggest sight along the drive was sandstone formations they called the 12 Apostles.  One of the “Apostles” fell about a decade ago due to erosion.  It’s amazing to think that these things have stood for probably thousands of years, yet collapsed in our lifetime.

You can see in the front left portion of the picture the remains of the one that fell.

Some of them had big cracks like this, which made you think they might fall into the ocean t any time.

This was the most crowded of all the tourist attractions we’ve seen.  And maybe also the most exploited.  Our driver told us that we could take a 15 minute helicopter tour over the 12 Apostles….for $150 per person.  And there were helicopters flying, so people are actually paying that!!!

There isn’t much else to say about it, I’ll let the photos do the talking.

We saw more cockatoos in flocks on the ground.  We were only able to get a pic of these two, but isn't it funny to see them like ordinary gulls or pigeons?