Grampians NP & The Great Ocean Road

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In order to get myself from Adelaide to Melbourne, I booked myself a three day trip with Groovy Grape, which covered the Great Ocean Road and Grampians National Park. On the first day left Adelaide at 6.45 in the morning and a lot of the first day was spent on the bus as most of the places of interest along the way were quite far away from the city. Long bus journey as ever a good opportunity to catch up on some sleep! We did stop at a few places but mainly just pit stops to grab some food and have lunch etc. I was lucky to have a nice bunch of people on the tour with me again, as well as having nice tour guide etc. Once we arrived at the Grampians NP, we went for a walk down to the bottom of Mckenzie falls, it was nice walk although little tiring on the way back up!! At the Grampians it was very smoky from all the bush fires so obviously didn't get as clear views as we might have at some of the viewing points etc but still enjoyed it. The first night of the trip we stayed at Halls Gap at place called Brambuk backpackers. We had a nice barbeque dinner and few drinks afterwards, so was a nice relaxed evening just getting to know each other. Quite a lot of the group had a go at playing the didgeridoo which was good fun. The hostel was next to the Aboriginal cultural centre, so some of the people from there were really nice and tried to give the group a few pointers on how to play it!

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The following morning we set off at about 8 in the morning and went for a bit of a hike in the National Park. The hike was a good couple of hours and was pretty steep in places but was enjoyed it and defintitely worthwhile. Think we would have gone up further but our tour leader decided that wasn't worth it as the smoke had pretty much obscured the views. After the walk we had some time to explore the Aboriginal cultural centre, which was really interesting and informative. We started off by watching a video on the area and then had time to explore the exhibits and read all the displays etc.

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After a bit more driving and a picnic lunch stop we then joined the great ocean road and made a few stops during the afternoon to take in the awesome views. We visited some really nice places such as bay if island, bay of martyrs, The Arch and London Bridge. At about 6 in the evening we arrived at our hostel in Port Campell and had a while just to chill before heading out to watch the sunset over the Twelve Apostles. It was really lovely and the Twelve Apostles were specatcular, the only slight shame being its only winter that the sunsets directly over them so struggled in vain for the perfect picture! Was beautiful nonetheless! Absolutely starving by time we finally ate at about 10.30, had mexican food cooked up by the 3 mexican girls on the trip but v good but was so hungry at that point would have eaten anything!

On the final day of the tour we set off early again and the whole day was spent on the Great Ocean Road finally getting into Melbourne in the evening. It was a really lovely day although all the flies were starting to drive me mad!! We first went back to see the Twelve Apostles in the early morning sunlight and get some further pictures! We also walked down Gibson's steps where you can see the twelve apostles from down on the beach. That was a nice view but you couldn't see as much of them as you could from higher up. After that we carried on to the Otway National Park and did a walk in the temperate rainforest which was nice and got some pics there too! We had a good fish & chips lunch in Apollo Bay and stopped at some nice places afterwards like Bells Beach which is famous for being great surfing spot but weather wasn't right so didn't spot anyone out on the water. At Torquay had some time to look at all the surf shops round Surf World there, i ended up buying a couple of Rip Curl tops from an outlet store so got bit of a bargain! The final part of the drive has us dirve through Geelong, arriving into Melbourne at about 6.30. I was staying at St Kilda and was the final drop off but was quite good for me as got a bit of a tour around the city dropping everyone off at the other hostels!