First stop, Geelong.

Cumberland River Reserve camp ground.
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Our first night camping since we left home went well. The Geelong Tourist Park where we stayed is part of the Big 4 parks network. It had good facilities including a camp kitchen and rec room with Austar. We set up the tent on our unpowered site without too much trouble but decided to use the communal camp kitchen to cook and save our gas. We got up, and began packing up, at around 8am on Thursday morning as we had to checkout by 10am.

We spent a very warm sunny morning walking around Geelong – the day got to 35^oC. We parked near Cunningham Wharf and walked around the waterfront for a while before heading into the city. The wharf area was very pretty with grassy areas, restaurants and many sculptures, including the famous bollards. The bollards are a collection of sculptures made from old wharf pylons painted up as characters from Geelong’s history. We walked around the city centre, but there wasn’t a lot to see other than shops so we headed back to the car. We drove up to the top of Eastern Beach Road, a hill overlooking the city of Geelong, and ate our packed lunch of sandwiches while we enjoyed the stunning view of the bay.

Great Ocean Road historical marker
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After lunch, we started along The Great Ocean Road towards Torquay. The day was very hot by this stage, so we had the windows wound right down to try and keep cooler. We stopped at Torquay to check out its famous surf beaches, and I had a browse in the many surf brand stores in town. Back on the Ocean Road, we stopped to photograph the Great Ocean Road historical marker arch. We then continued on to Aireys Inlet where we walked to the Split Point Lighthouse. There was a nice view of the rugged ‘shipwreck coast’ from the lookouts at the base of the lighthouse. We passed through Lorne without stopping to reach our stop for the night – The Cumberland River Reserve Tourist Park. 7kms from Lorne, Cumberland River was a pretty campground with a river and rocky cliff face behind the sites.

Surf beach at Torquay
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At Cumberland River we experienced our first camping thunderstorm. We were all set up when I thought I heard thunder. Within about an hour we saw some flashes of lightning, then the rain started. It poured for about 20 minutes while Bren and I did our best to get everything under the small shelter of our tent awning. I felt anxious what if it rained heavily all night? We used our washing up bucket to collect the rain running off the front of the awning to stop it soaking the groundsheet under the awning. Luckily, the rain didn’t last long at all, and we barely got wet. All in all we coped quite well – the tent didn’t leak and we stayed dry!