6 am: Flight to Melbourne
At Melbourne airport we rented a car and headed to the Great Ocean Road. It was a beautiful coastal road with high cliffs and we were able to see the power of nature – strong breaking waves. Many lookouts were on the way, some of them with the access to the beach, the others with Cockatoo trying to steal our biscuits.
Great Otway National Park is well known for lots of eucalyptus trees in which many koalas can be spotted. Thus we were interested in seeing them as well. According to recommendations, we stopped at Kafe Koala in Kennet River and were amazed to see 3 cute koalas in eucalyptus trees at the beginning of the Kennet River Koala walk. One of them was sleeping and the other ones were eating eucalyptus leaves so we were lucky to spot them in their 4 hours non-sleep time per day. It seemed that they were taken there as expositions because walking further we didn’t spot any. Additionally, many colourful parrots were around but they seemed to be full because other tourist offering them food didn’t get their attention.
There are many must-see lookouts getting closer to 12 Apostles so we were stopping at most of them as we planned to spend the whole day only for that.
The view point of 12 Apostles which were formed by erosion and were up to 50 meters high was magnificent but it was so crowded that we couldn’t enjoy the panorama just for ourselves. By the way, the title doesn’t reflect the real image. It has never been 12 Pinnacles off the shore! It used to be only 9, one of which collapsed in 2005. Additionally, it used to be called the Sow and Pigs.
At the beginning we didn’t plan to stop at the Bay of Islands lookout which is at the very end of the Great Ocean Road but being advised by the locals we did and to our surprise the view was even better than 12 Apostles. Of course, it could have been because of clear blue sky and bright sun. Anyways it was worth spotting with only few people around.
As my family was disappointed by not seeing any kangaroos in spending 2 weeks in Australia, we stopped at Eco-Friendly Wildlife Sanctuary to make sure they don’t leave the country without seeing the national animal. It was a great place letting to feed few kangaroos and to see wallabies close by which were super shy and were jumping away, to spot or even touch and get to know Dingo, and to my surprise deers and roes. Great and quite place to see some animals in the wild.
Locals told us that kangaroos are always around in the valleys but it is difficult to spot them because during the day time they usually stay in the forest and come to the valleys in the early morning or before the sunset which came to be true. Even though we were quite far away, we were lucky to spot approximately 15 kangaroos which were in 3 separate groups which made such a nice end to one more great day.
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