great ocean road!

the great ocean road trip was so neat!  

this was last weekend (27 september).

it was about a 3 hour drive, but we stopped at least every thirty minutes to see something new.  it was a really curvy bumpy ride the whole way..glad i took some dramamine (non drowy of course!)  the great ocean road was actually built after an australian went to california and drove along route 66 and thought australia should have something like that to showcase all of it's beautiful rocky and teal coastlines.

this was the view for the whole drive...

what some of our drive looked like out of the window on the other side of the road...

first stop..bells beach...we stopped to take a picture with the great ocean road arch...

this is the fourth one.  the first three were all destroyed for different reasons (storm, car hitting, etc.).  apparently the first three were all very nice and beautiful, but finally on the fourth they decided just to use some good ol' timber.

another stop along the way was split point lighthouse..

next was a stop at a national park to look for wild koalas!

then, a 20 minute walk through a rainforest...
the 2nd tallest tree in the world was here, a species of eucalyptus.
lots of ferns!
our next stop was the twelve apostles..it was hazy and cold, but still beautiful!
and there are actually only seven, not twelve...

and then, shipwreck coast..

what they call london bridge...

the empty space between the two rock formations used to be rock also, but it crumbled in 1990.  two people even got stuck on the piece that's now just out in the ocean!