The great ocean road

The next big road we had in Frank the Falcon, was down South west of Melbourne towards the great ocean road and Torquay. The great ocean road was built by convicts and returned soldiers after WW1 to just marvel the tourists. Something like the Pan Pacific Highway in California, (Thats for Dave). It a pretty impressive road, much like the road to Bundoran but a shit load more impressive. It starts down at Surf coast before changing into shipwreck coast, (more shipwrecks along heres than anywhere else in the world). So the first stop on the trip was Torquay, a Mecca for surfers everywhere, home to the Ripcurl, Billabong, Quicksilver etc. headquaters. Cheap surfing stuff everywhere, and everybody surfs. Theres 6 year olds around here that would but you to shame. So underneath is Torqauy beach itself. Bean Cathy & Laura are just warming up about to jump into the deep. Fantastic place for anyone to surf, beach breaks, reef breaks, beginers to Pros its got it all.

Next beach on the stop of was Bells Beach, home of the surfing world championships the Rip Curl Pros. This is the biggest surfing comp of the year and its on in a few weeks, so I'll be around for that, and Torqauy is going to be rocking for a week two in March. I feel I must jump in Frank agian and head on down and pertend I'm a surfer for a few nights. So its a pretty nice beach and if any body rembers Point Break, that classic peice of film making staring the wooden Keanu Reeves and the legendary Patrick Swayze this is the place where Patrick famously went into the water and Keanu comes running down the beach and screams from the shore as patrick catches catches a king wave and gets completely dumped on never to resuface again. (but he did in Donnie Darko). Anyway you can actually see the point break in the photo. Its breaking on the very left of the photo.This beach was a bit meaty for our mediocore surfing ability. I was a bit to scared to jump in with a body board anyway. Bean and Cathy jumped in but got smashed about and rip apart until the finally gave up hope and called it a day. The rips were so strong that day that even the locals were staying away, so round of applause to a valiant effort by Bean & Cathy.


Now I don't know how many of ye are going to remember this show but I used to love it as a kid. The theme tune went like
"have you ever,
ever felt like this
when strange things happen
are you going round the twist.

Going round the twwwwiissssttt"

A classic show where something nuts with ghosts or withches happened each week, and I got a photo of the light house where the show was shot.

I hope this stirs a few memorys for a few of ye.

And now onward to the Great Ocean Road, which it is a couple of hundred kilometers of some of the most impressive scenery in the country. Its kinda hard to discribe, but what they done is for 100K's they dug into solid stone cliff faces just so that a couple couple of tourist could be a little impressed. Thats a lot of rock (sligo-galway). it might seem like a lot of effort for a strecht of road but I think it was worth it, its pretty timeless. So enough of my bullshit heres a few photos.







These are taken along the surf coast, it should give a little example of the kinda work that when into building this road and the miles of quality surf all the way along. The whole way theres just this beautiful scenery coupled with the sound of a wave crashing once a minute.

I'll finsh this log tomorrow I gotta run to work... outty

OK I'm back a week later to finish this, Lazy I know. So next up is shipwreck coast, lots of cliffs in sea stacks, the most famous sea stacks are the 12 apostles. Can anyone quess how many sea stacks there are, eh, anyone. Is it 12,
uh uh
Our survey says NO, theres only ten, 2 fell down
You can't see all of them here, but you get the impression.

Heres a cave named after an Irish man, I forget his name its probably McGinty or something, but on his way from the Emerald Ilse his boat got shipwreck out at sea and he washed up just beside this cave. Then he spotted a young maiden stranded on the rocks, so he went to save her which he did. And the aussies thought this was great a young couple Irish finding love out of utter tragedy. But no, the stinking bitch burn him big style, she said fuck you loser and hopped on a boat back home to her mammy. (maybe she brought her football too).

And this is a road sign...
Thats right its a road sign, a little bit of symbolilsation on everything that is an aussie holiday, open road, bush and kangaroos.