March 5-8 was the Australian Labour Day weekend. Rick and I decided to head down to the Great Ocean Road to see the sights and stay with another ITF teacher in Warrnambool for the weekend. He was heading to a folk festival in the neighbouring town of Port Fairy for the weekend, but offered to let us stay at his place anyways. We left for Warrnambool right after school, a 5-hour drive which was right through the barren and desolate Australian dairy country.
We spent one day in the Otway National Park, which is made up of dense cool temperate rain forest. Giant mountain ash trees provide the canopy protecting pristine waterfalls and lush vegetation. The Otway Fly Tree Top Walk is a major feature of the area. We walked 60 feet above the ground, looking for dinosaurs, birdlife and wildlife. In a previous blog I have described our encounter with a koala en route to the Cape Otway Light Station. It is the oldest surviving light station in mainland Australia. It provides amazing views over the Southern Ocean, as all the brochures coin the body of water. For all you scholars reading this blog, since when has there been a Southern Ocean? 
The majority of our time
was spent seeing the incredible sights that the Great Ocean Road and vicinity have to offer! We stopped at every possible scenic viewpoint to see the scuptures in sandstone that the wave erosion has created. We loved the Grotto, the London Bridge (which has now fallen back into the water), the Bay of Islands, the Arch and the Loch Ard formations just as much as the famous Twelve Apostle formations (which now have only eight remaining apostles). Busloads of tourists visit its site daily. We learned all about the hazardous water conditions which appropriately gave the area its name as "the Shipwreck Coast". At night in Warrnambool we saw a great Sound and Laser show which depicted the demise of the great Loch Ard ship and the two survivors who lived to tell the tale of the shipwreck! It began to rain heavily during the show, and the laser depiction was actually rocking in the storm!! By now our little car is getting used to driving along the windy Great Ocean road and Rick is getting very acclimatized to driving on the left side of the road.
We spent part of one day of the weekend visiting the folk festival and checking out the music, the arts & craft booths, and the food kiosks at Port Ferry. Love those didgeridoos! How are we ever going to get one home to Canada?
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