Great Ocean Road – Exploring Victoria Day 02

I was excited about this day ever since I started making itinerary for the trip partly because of the thrilling journey ahead and mainly because Samina’s family (my sister who reside in Shepparton), Ammi and another sister from Pakistan (who were on visit those days) were to join us for the escapade. yayyy

Great Ocean Road (GOR) is one of the top rated tourist attractions in the state of Victoria. It is a 244 km long scenic drive along rainforests, beaches and cliffs. One can’t drive through the highway like any other road. Every other turn and twist of the road is so picturesque that you just can’t resist stopping and admiring the beauty of nature Subhan Allah (Praised be the Almighty).

There are multiple ways to travel over GOR; Many tour operators offer one or 2 day Bus tours starting from 94 AUD but the best way to traverse the highway is to rent a car and hit the road. Google Maps are your best companion in this regard. This way you are free to spend as much time you want at any spot. Therefore, we also rented a car to explore the GOR. One day was not looking enough considering the suggestions we got (all thanks to Aliza Faraz Khan :* ) so we reserved 2 days in our plan for the said adventure and they were totally worth it.

We checked out from our hotel and got the extra baggage stored in luggage room of next hotel to check in. The plan was to drive directly to 12 Apostles which is about 2 hr 45 min away from Melbourne, then start covering the lookouts backwards towards the city and spend the night midway GOR at Apollo Bay where we had booked a villa. Sounds interesting, yeahhh 😀

Point Cooke Marine Sanctuary (E called it ‘ganda(dirty) beach’ :p – It was the meeting point with the ones who were joining us)

Such beautiful landscapes were on the way

Speed limit is only 100 km/h on the highway

Wheat and Rye Farms (you will witness these farms the most on all roads in Australia)

Here is the first live session I did from 12 Apostles, so its kinda special. Show some love peeps 🙂

A failed attempt with baby leash in hand

On the way towards Apollo Bay.. all wet and extra cold because of rain

Tricky drive because day light was vanishing

Forests along the road – tall trees all over

It is not safe to drive on these roads after sunset because there is a likelihood to get hit and endanger the native wild animals (kangaroos, koalas and wombats) so we oversped through the trees and reached Apollo Bay just in time. Checked in to our 3 bedroom awesomely cosy villa (this was one of the best accommodations of the trip). Check out some pictures below.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

We celebrated Bushra’s (my younger sister) birthday there, prepared BBQ which Samina had brought. Ate too much and called it a day finally because we were all too much exhausted after the looong drive and had to recharge our energy levels for the next day where more walk and more drive was awaiting us.

This has been a long post i know but I just couldn’t stopped myself from writing and skipping any detail and suggestion. It would have been unfair had i done so. right? Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did 🙂

GOR is love totally – The next post is gonna be even more beautiful with stunning lookouts, stay tuned!