A mother and two little girls about 7 and 10 sitting behind us on our plane home from Australia on Wednesday. As the Qantas 747 lifted off the Melbourne runway the mother told her girls to tell Australia good-bye. They called out "Good bye Australia! Good-bye Australia! We love you!" I wanted to join in with them. We had a marvelous trip and although it is wonderful to be home, I do love Australia.
We flew home on Wednesday. In my last blog post Sunday night we were in Apollo Bay, Victoria on Australia's Great Ocean Road.
Almost every small town in Australia has a bakery, a butchery, and a fruit and veggies shop. Most days on our trip we stopped at a bakery and picked up bread and a treat for lunch. The bakery in Apollo Bay had signs in its windows saying it had won awards for being one of the best bakeries in Australia.
They had what looked like some wonderful big cinnamon rolls. I asked the shop lady what they were and she said "they are cheese and Vegemite rolls".That would have been a shock to my mouth if I thought I was biting into a cinnamon roll and instead got cheese and Vegemite! We bought one and had it for breakfast. It was really good.
Monday we continued our drive along the Great Ocean Road. We climbed down Gibson Steps to the beach. You can just see me in this picture.
We stopped at several view points along the road. We saw the Twelve Apostles rock formations.
The London Bridge Rock formation used to be like a two arch bridge. The first arch collapsed in 1990. At the time there were some people out on what became the island. They had to be rescued by helicopter.
After our drive along the Great Ocean Road we headed inland and spent the night in the town of Halls Gap in Grampian National Park. We stayed in a cabin on Monday night. The lawn in front of reception was covered with kangaroos.
There were also several cockatoos on the table outside our door.
Tuesday morning we hiked in Grampian National Park. This formation is called the Balconies.
Grampian National Park also had a lot of pretty wild flowers
Tuesday afternoon we headed back to Melbourne found a motel near the airport and spent the night there before flying home on Wednesday.
All of my pictures from our trip are on Flickr here. I'll be adding titles and descriptions to the picture over the next week or so. I'm also planning a summary post with info about the cost of our trip, a map, and what I consider some of the highlights and low-lights of the trip. If there are other things you would like to know about our Austalian road trip please leave me a comment or drop me an email.
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