The Great Ocean Roadtrip (Australia Part 2)

The Great Ocean Road

South of Melbourne, myself and 2 German girls (Jana and Hannah, ja!) packed a tiny rental car full of camping gear, backpacks, juggling balls, frustrating card tricks, and some disastrously loose-lidded hummus for a 4 day road trip along the twists and turns of the famous Great Ocean Road. Slow-motion koala bears clung to the branches of the pungent eucalyptus forests as we breezed by listening to old LP music on the car stereo. We camped out at the beautiful Johanna Beach where the sand and dunes were constantly punished by pounding waves. We stretched out on the beach with a bottle of red wine, and watched shooting stars (or German stern schnuppes, or German/English stan snoopies) splash across the sky where the Southern Cross and other constellations slowly spun in the opposite direction than I am used to. Have you ever taken the time to notice which direction the stars spin? At bottle’s end, we retreated back to the tent where the girls cuddled up to a hot water bottle to take the remaining edge off the slightly cool evening air. Returning to Melbourne for a few days, I hung out with my really cool friends I met at ConFest (Wayne the dinosaur mechatronics engineer, and Maya the Mayan Calendar goddess).

Sydney
Sydney is home to a stunning collection of nooks and crannies of beautiful beaches and big swells… and is also home to possibly the world’s most expensive, least intuitive, and ugliest public transportation system. I met up with Andrea (my wild lawyer friend I met in Greece), Nyree and Nik (from my Guatemala yoga/meditation course), and Fiona (from the squash courts of the University of Calgary) and her two boys (husband and son).

Hannah and I went out hiking in the rain near Katoomba, where raging waterfalls plunged hundreds of metres into the soft tree-topped abyss of the Blue Mountains. The famous 3 Sisters hid from my sight in the thick fog, as did the steep stairways descending down into the dark valley. As afternoon blended into evening, the light changed only slightly and thick misty air intensified into torrential rain. We only just made it into the comfort of the Common Ground Café before we were completely soaked. As the wicked weather licked the windows of the cosy café, we warmed ourselves with pumpkin soup, yerba mate (Che style), and sunk deep into my chair and lost myself in the prose of a Mark Twain novel beside the heat of the stone fireplace. Back in Sydney, I weathered the German trash-talk and managed to educate my worthy opponent Jana on the devastating Canadian ping-pong forehand.

Great Ocean Road, Australia. I might not be able to jump like a kangaroo, but I still managed to get up on this signpost!


Great Ocean Road, Australia. Strange animals... and strange signs, and very true!


Great Ocean Road, Australia. Koalas just hanging out in the trees, too lazy to even munch the eucalyptus.


Bell's Beach, Great Ocean Road, Australia. Yeah, this is supposed to be the one from the end of the Point Break movie... I must have missed the '50 year wave'...


The Great Ocean Road, Australia. Jana and I balancing... she may have better balance, but it's really the ping-pong that matters!


Great Ocean Road, Australia. One of the fern-covered boardwalks.


The 12 Apostles, Great Ocean Road, Australia. I'm not sure if there are still 12 of them, since they keep falling down!


The 12 Apostles, Great Ocean Road, Australia. Hannah's unenthusiastic yoga pose.


The 12 Apostles, Great Ocean Road, Australia.


The 12 Apostles, Great Ocean Road, Australia. Jana flying through the air!


Sunset somewhere near Johanna beach, near a field of cows and a trunk full of spilled hummous!



The swirling stars at Johanna Beach. I used The Southern Cross to locate the point in the sky where the stars all rotate around... actually, it located the south pole, which lies on the axis the earth spins around that makes it appear that the stars are all rotating about this point... semantics.