A week in and around Melbourne and The Great Ocean Road 2023

We're spending the UK summer in Australia during their winter. We've travelled light each with 15kg of checked luggage and 7kg of hand luggage. We've packed for both winter and for summer.

I visited Melbourne with child 3 in 2019, I wanted to show Peter some of the things I'd enjoyed 4 years earlier, but also wanted to have new experiences to share together. We packed a lot in, in the week and hardly stopped.

We started our trip in Melbourne where we had the first 3 days in the city to adjust to the 9 hour time difference, eating and sleeping when we felt like it. We explored Melbourne and walked around 25 miles over two days, visiting Fitzroy Gardens, the MCG and The Botanical Gardens for the light show on our last evening.

The Yarra at night

Why they brought James Cooks parents cottage over from Yorkshire, brick by brick, I'll never know. he never lived in it.

Fairy Tree

The docklands at 6am

We explored the street art graffiti in AC/DC lane and surrounding area, visited the Opal museum and enjoyed a variety of meals with plenty of coffee shops.

We hired a car and drove to Philip Island to visit the Koala Conservation and watch the Penguin Parade as the Fairy Penguins come into shore from a days fishing at sunset. We stayed in Cowes for the night.

We then drove to Colac for the night stopping in St Kilda for lunch. We stayed in a motel that looked like there would be a chalk line of a body, but turned out to be the cleanest hotel room we'd stayed in for a long time. it was spotless.

We then hit The Great Ocean Road and visited The Twelve Apostles and stopped at Cape Otway to discover the lighthouse's lenses were made in the 1850's by a company that are located just down the road from our house in the UK. 

Sadly the Great Ocean Road was down to one lane in many areas, due to subsidence

The Twelve Apostles

Cape Otway Lighthouse

Regardless of the weather, we're Brits, we'll go on the beach

We spent a night in Lorne at a caravan park and the last day was spent stopping where we fancied for coffee and lunch.

Car hire returned and airport hotel checked into before our early morning departure to The Whitsunday Islands for a week.

Peter still hasn't seen a Kangaroo and this is his second trip to Australia. He did see a Wallaby though. Peter is convinced Kangaroos are imaginary animals, like unicorns. 

Australia 2019

I spent 3 weeks in Australia in July and August 2019 visiting my son who has lived there for 2 years. He was based in Sydney where I flew into from my home in Dubai, but was moving to Finley to work on a farm as part of his visa conditions, north of Melbourne.

We spent A long weekend in Sydney exploring the beaches and the mountains, before driving the coast road on Our trip from Sydney to Phillip Island stopping at Jervis Bay for a night then onto Phillip Island for 2 nights.

Next up we drove from Phillips Island to Port Fairy, stopping over night in Lorne and Warrnambool then from Port Fairy to Melbourne via the Grampians staying at Lake Fyans before ending up with A week in Melbourne.

Driving is on the left, so the wrong side of the road for me, but it didn't take long to work it out. I noticed that lanes merged a lot at junctions and the speed limit was slow, dropping to 50km in towns and villages and 40km during school hours. Whilst this is good as we were avoiding the toll routes, the planned journeys took longer than anticipated and we had to change our schedule more than once.

Combined we drove 3421km/2125 miles, walked 61km/37 miles and climbed the equivalent of 

346 stair cases.

The Accommodation in Australia couldn't be faulted. The country side and Flora and Fauna in Australia was stunning.

Road Kill, kangaroo, it was over a week before I saw a live one

These Ibis are nicknamed Bin Chickens

There was a turkey scavenging on the beach

Here are a selection of random photos that caught my eye, that amused or puzzled me.

A boulder company making them look attractive

Whenever I parked I needed to google what I was to actually do

traffic lights had a fancy countdown on them although most of the road works were actually manned

Looking for a food/fuel/rest/overnight stop on route then I suggest you enter McDonalds into the GPS as they were found in all the bigger towns

Love some of the advertising, theres a store called Boating, camping and fishing. Their jingle is BC F'ing Good.

This slogan works well, I say little waste on my travels and there were plenty of recycling and waste opportunities

Love a drive through Bottle-O

Apparently cats are banned. My son informed me that many people actually take their cats as well as their dogs when they go on road trips. 

We didn't see any snakes, but once you were outside the city there were lots of warnings

Winter so fire rating low

Didn't manage to catch any photos/video of kangaroo on the roads, but saw plenty and they don't half move

Didn't see any koala outside of parks

There had been a shark spotted at Manly only a few weeks earlier

Information about do's and dont's and what wildlife to expect

Animals and birds become aggressive towards humans if you feed them and it actually endangers their lives

The coast line was stunning, you're reminder just how powerful the ocean is

A lot of British names and twinning, but the geography of it confused me

Found this little souviener all the way from Tintern Abbey in Wales, just down the road from where we stay when we visit the UK

Of course no trip to Australia is complete without a visit to Bondi Beach to catch the surf

And a visit to Ramsey Street to see Neighbours