I’m sorry for my beloved California and the Highway 1 that I have travelled up and down a couple of times – but this coast line simply beats everything!

Sunday morning we headed south along Port Philipp’s Bay, to catch a ferry over to the other side in Sorrento and head along the Great Ocean Road.

The weather wasn’t perfect, in fact it got colder and darker the further we went, and by the time we reached the Ocean Road, it was raining! Bummer!

We skipped Lorne more or less, only got a coffee in a surfer’s club, and drove on. Then, we were lucky, the sky cleared and we were rewarded with one of the most beautiful sights on Earth.

Where the California coast south of San Francisco is rocky and inaccessible, this coast has a number of accessible, sandy beaches to walk along, then rises up again for breathtaking views above the rocks.

We were heading for the Twelve Apostles, a number of solitary rock columns that erosion has yet to bring down. We were unsure of the exact number, some books mentioned they were in fact only eight, some said 7, we counted more… But the erosion constantly works on this coast and creates new columns, while others crumble.

 

We made a number of stops, and we could have spent all day there, walking on the beach where accessible, or just standing above the cliffs, trying not to be blown away by those massive winds…

But we had to get on to Warrnambool, the town where we had booked our hotel, the ‘bool as we called it because we just could not remember the correct pronunciation.

Turns out, this is the name the locals have given it, too.

 

Totally starved, we stumbled into the last open Siamese take-out and got some great curries.

Haven’t slept as well in a long time, after the wind had blown through my brain and clothes like this.