Port Campbell, Australia

Greetings from Port Campbell, Australia (rainy and cold!)

I had been looking for an excuse to buy a sweatshirt with Australia on it. Well it is soooo chilly here that in one of the towns they had a sale on hoodies and I was able to get one. :)
We have experienced our first really nasty weather today with rain, wind and even some hail. However, we continued along the Great Ocean Road stopping along the way to see the beautiful scenery, first the powerful ocean with lots of white caps and huge waves breaking, contrasted with incredibly serene green pastures. Then we would drive through rain forests, with lots of Eucalypts trees. We saw sheep with baby lambs…. We saw wild parrots eating out of peoples hands (that was on the porch of the B&B this morning in Lorne.) We saw Koala bears in the wild (4 different times!)….managing to get a really neat video of a Mama with her baby. We saw lots of signs to watch for Kangaroos crossing the road, however we did not see any.
The big attraction of the Great Ocean Road is The Twelve Apostles. This is hard for me to describe but it is described in the literature as a wave tossed wilderness. A colossal natural sculpture park, where soaring rock stacks and tall cliffs redefine your sense of scale.
Today when we walked out to see these rocks we were almost blown away. The wind was so strong that we had to hang on to the railings and each other to keep from falling down.
Tonight we are staying in Port Campbell and after checking in at the motel we enjoyed a visit with a couple from Brisbane who gave us some hints regarding our anticipated time in New Zealand.
We ate this evening at a Bistro at the local hotel. Very good beef pie with Baileys Chocolate cheesecake and a coffee for dessert.
Oh, I found out why they always say a ‘long black’ when I order coffee………that is opposed to a small espresso cup … at home it would just be a black coffee.
Tonight when we had time on our computer we discovered that many of you had left comments on our blog….sorry we had not noticed before. It was still fun to read them and now we will take note.
Tomorrow we drive back to Melbourne and hope to make it to the zoo. This is the oldest zoo in the world and suppose to be one of the best. Early Sunday we fly back to Cairns and we will for sure write from there.
Take care…we will sign off now …going to sleep shortly as we listen to the howling wind and the rain spattering against the windows.
The Duffies