Grampians + Great Ocean Road Trip - Day 3

Day 3 - Warrnambool - Port Campbell - 12 Apostles (& back!)

An expected late start for us, but the glutton in us woke up & we managed to make it for breakfast at the hotel (cooked breakfast IS included despite what Agoda says if you're considering booking thru them).. they make lovely breakfast too btw. Did some quick snaps around the hotel that morning:

Breakfast area! lovely windows huh :)

Resident spidey!

Not sure what you call this.. a harpsichord of some kind??

Le main entrada

A fancy dining/lepak area.. 

Beautiful hang-out lounge.. too bad we didn't really have the time to berlepaks

Woof! owners were dog-lovers

Sherry & port FREE! :D

what you staring at

On the way towards Warrnambool, we drove past by Tower Hill reserve just outside the vicinity of Koroit town.. it's a park area that was formed due to volcanic eruption eons ago - but we didn't stop to explore coz we were off to explore Warrnambool instead..  it was still drizzling at this point & was worrying it'd be a day of bad weather.

Tower Hill Reserve lookout point

Warrnambool & Sites

Warrnambool was a far bigger town with all the necessary amenities, fast foods etc. We were both hunting for coffee that morning & sadly both the places we tried served terrible coffee..!! my long black was far too diluted & vonsy's flat white was well.. too flat. mm..

It was a terrible start but it didn't deter us from enjoying the town's offering.. good news was that the sun finally decided to come out & we really had no reason to be damp in spirit! even had time to do bit of modelling around town...

Hai Bin! :D

Hai Vons! :D

Vonsy finds a pickled pig

It wasn't until nearly lunch time when we left Warrnambool & started the slow long drive along B100 & the 12 Apostles.. what I did not expect & a clear sign of bad preparation was that there were actually SO MANY mini attractions along the way - starting with Logan's Beach just outside of Warrnambool (popular for whale watching):

Logan's Beach at Warrnambool.. 

We visited Bay of Islands,Worm Bay, Bay of Martyrs, Halladale Point, The Grotto, London Bridge, The Arch.. & it was funny coz these sites were only a few mins drive apart so we ended up start-stopping a lot n always bumping into the same group of tourists.... & quite honestly the coves & cliffs were starting to look the same after a while!

MINI DRAMA AT THE GROTTO. I was walking behind the lady in white seen in this pic towards the Grotto when suddenly out of the blue an elderly man fell onto the board-walk just a few metres in front of us (he must've gone off-track to take pictures etc) and was howling in pain... two of us rushed to him to make sure he was OK, his left knee was injured but no major drama in the end, many tourists had stopped after couple of minutes & helped him get ambulance service to the nearest town. I was just glad I didn't have to give mouth-2-mouth or anything like that.. 

The Grotto

One of the more impressive ones - they call this The Arch

Frying Nemo for dinner

Still paranoid bout meals, we decided to tapau our dinner from Port Campbell early (fish & chips again!). Anyway Port campbell was jam packed with tourists & we decided to quickly grab some food before all kitchen closed! the first restaurant's kitchen we visited was already closed (it was only 5pm) sorry i must sound like a glutton by now..  anyway the plan was to head to the apostles early, makan and hang until it was sunset time.. 

12 Apostles

It took just another 15mins of driving from Port campbell to reach the ever famous 12 Apostles... couple of tour-buses, a full car-park.. couple of thousands of tourists.. a real put-off of coz but whatcha gonna do eh?

Tourists & tourists.. 

Check out the scene.. more people than a shopping mall. No wonder all accommodation were fully booked..  this was the viewing point for the 12 Apostles. It was like a massive congregation of everyone we saw at the other sites too (eg. the guy in green in pic below is one of them!).. all having the same itinerary for the day - speed visit all other sites & adjourn to 12 apostles for sunset!

& more tourists.. 

2 stumps you can visit left of the viewing bay.. via Gibsons Steps.  

yay we made it.. one for the album :)

So after the initial round checking the apostles, we drove over to Gibson Steps, investigated the beach & waited (vonsy eventually went back to the car to wait), summer days = late sunset.. 

Vonsy & I & many others lingered by the beach off Gibsons steps for few hours spending time with the ocean

Nearly forgot about this shot - we found a lil fairy penguin washed up on the shore.. reminder of the wrath that comes with the beauty of the ocean..

It wasn't until 845pm the sun finally showed signs of tiredness & started glowing its evening rays...

Well.. with sunset over the 12 Apostles witnessed.. it was back to long slow drive back towards Koroit.. the evening sky dragged on for us until the very end (around 1015pm). Vonsy remarked that the glowing yellow sky against the vast & wide lands looked like the African Savannah.. And as we finally pulled back into Koroit, the big moon was up & marked the end of another crazy long day of exploration.. I was tired but satisfied. We spent the rest of the evening glued to the tele watching this Japanese movie about gangsters in a high school fighting each other & all.. funny way to end the day huh? :)

Anyway the next day would be our last day on this road trip, and we'd be driving along the Great Ocean all the way back to Melbourne with one last stop to make.. stay tuned.