Great Ocean Road

I’m whining again.
Sorry about that, but it must be a huge character flaw.
All of Saturday night it was blowing a gale.
Sunday it was still blowing a gale. I am sorry but I just have to grumble, I was housebound for a week with the dread ‘hamthrax” (I hadn’t heard the term used for swine-flu before yesterday). Now I was well enough to get out and about, but if I did it looked like I’d get blown away…literally.
Then suddenly the wind began to drop, a quick look out the window and we were off for a drive.

It was late in the day for starting a decent drive (about 1:00pm)
But Deb and I decided on a quick run down to the Great Ocean Road.
We shot down the Eastern Freeway in a few minutes and into city traffic on Alexandria Parade. Suddenly in a Sunday afternoon gridlock it didn’t seem like such a good idea to go the way we did.
I’m grumbling again aren’t I?

The jam only went for about six blocks and after 20 minutes we were through. Down past Melbourne Zoo, across Flemington Rd and turn onto Citylink, from there it is freeway to Geelong.
By 3:00 pm were not only out of the city, but here…
Anglesea 140km (about 90 miles) from home.

Unfortunately it was raining, so we sat in the car and ate fish and chips from the local chippy (a quick translation for any Americans in the audience, chips are like chunky French fries and a chippy is a shop that sells grease in various take-away forms. Take-away is take-out… now I am being stupid. I’ll save my translations for words like ocker, dinkum, or drongo.)

We decided to keep going but stopped as we climbed out of Anglesea to get a couple of photos.
The light wasn’t great but you get the idea, it’s a nice spot.
The Road is in the foreground of the above photo. It is by no means a "great road" but it runs along a beautiful coastline. It was built during the Great Depression as a means of keeping men in employment. Essentially it was built entirely using pick and shovel.

Just a little further along we stopped again to get some shots of the coast looking towards Split Point Lighthouse and Airey’s Inlet. We walked down to the beach across this bridge
and got this view.

Even as we watched more cloud came in from the west covering the lighthouse in rain.
Back in the car we kept going, past the Devils Elbow and to Lorne.
From Lorne you can look back up the coast to Split Point.
There was a nice (if short) rainbow out to sea.

We drove on for about ten minutes past Lorne before stopping again to get photos of the road coming around a headland near She Oak Creek.
At that point we decided we had come far enough. The day was drawing to an end and if we went further we would only miss the scenery in the dark.

The day had one more treat in store for us. Heading back towards Anglesea, we pulled over at the same place we took the first photos of Split Point.
The lighthouse was catching the last of the evening light.
Then minute by minute the light changed…
and again…
We stayed until the last colour had gone from the clouds
and then hit the road homeward bound.