Whoever visited Melbourne was certainly driving along the great ocean raod as well. We did it of course! And we now understand why everyone is doing so - it is a very interesting coast.

The first part is very important for surfers, and we are no surfers so it is not for us. That's why we travelled along this part rather quickly. It is getting very interesting from the Cape Ottway onwards. The Cape itself was exciting for us because of the koalas we saw there for the first time in our lives. By accident we've seen the first one and it was bareley five meters away. It was on a short walk to a beach. However, it wasn't the last on this day, no, we've seen at least a dozen more as we drove away from the Cape.

After the Cape the most interesting part (in our eyes) begins. The former twelve aphostels, the steep cliffs and the collapsed London bridge - a magnet for lots of tourists! Hundrets of them flocked around, took the must-have pictures of the aphostels and vanished as fast as they got there. We came back for the sunset and were happy that there wern't as many as during the afternoon.

The next day, after the beauty of the coast we turned inland. Our first stop on the way to the Grampians was a small park, Mt Eccles National Park. There are heaps of Manna Gums the favourite food of koalas. We made a small hike around the crater lake and discovered 20 of those loveable mammals, even so that we could take pictures close up. It is a lie to say they sleep all the time because they were very active, especially during the early evening hours. They even make a sound, a fact that we didn't know, something between a hissing of a cat and the squicking of a pig.

The Grampians, one of the biggest parks in Victoria, was almost burnt to the ground a year ago. Approximately 150'000 acres of forest were destroyed in a fortnight. Now we could see the forest recover from the fire and it was very green everywhere. Unfortunately we walked over blackened soil and the dust it makes sticks perfectly to the very needed sunscreen... Nothing to worry when you have a shower avaiable (we had not).

However, there are still many parts of the park closed and hiking was almost impossible. The first day we were driving through almost completly blackend forest and some of the campgrounds were still closed. The second day we were more in the northern part of the park were the fire wasn't so intense and we were able to hike to some aboriginal rockpaintings.  

Afterwards we left the state of Victoria. Just by coincidence we knew that we are not allowed to take any fruits or vegis across the state borders, otherwise you'll get a fine of 2500 $. We didn't intend to spend our mony in this way and so we had to ate all our fruits and vegis in one afternoon. Quite a bit...Especially the grapes had their influence on our digesting. We had to look for toillets on our way back to the coast...

The coast south of Adelaide smells pretty bad. Maybe that's why we didn't stay long there and made the most direct  way to the city of Adelaide.