The Great Ocean Road – Torquay & Bells Beach

This is Part 2 of our Melbourne and Great Ocean Road trip that went from 22 – 30 November 2018.

The trip started with two nights in Melbourne which was covered here in Part 1 and then we picked up a hire car from Avis in the city and headed off for the Great Ocean Road adventure.  The car was fantastic – a white Mitsubishi Outlander ASX – comfy, fuel-efficient, reliable, and also I like cars where you’re sitting up higher off the road – so tick, tick tick, tickedy tick!   There’s one pictured above (not our actual car though).

We took our own ‘TomTom’ GPS with us and made sure it was fully updated before leaving home.  Thank goodness for it too as it was particularly helpful for navigating us out of the city!  

We were on our way to Lorne (where we would be staying the night) and our first stop along the way was at Torquay where we stopped at a cafe for a coffee.  We didn’t have a very good look around the town of Torquay I must admit (though I did buy a few groceries from a supermarket there!) but we were sure to stop and check out the renowned Bells Beach (world-famous surfing destination)!

This is a very brief video I took whilst sitting at a cafe at Torquay having a coffee.  This beautiful sparrow had joined me. By the time I got the phone out to film him I didn’t have long before he flew away. I noticed the sparrows very much in Victoria because we sadly don’t see them anymore here in Brisbane, Queensland.

Torquay is the official start point of the Great Ocean Road.  It’s also the home of Bells Beach and birthplace of iconic brands Rip Curl and Quicksilver.  You might think Torquay would have a very small population (well I thought it would!) but at the 2016 Census, Torquay apparently had a population of 13,258!  Torquay is home to the Australian National Surfing Museum (which we unfortunately didn’t have time to visit).

There’s quite a few steps down to Bells Beach and it’s surrounded in high, majestic cliffs which kind of make it like a natural amphitheatre.  Large swells from the Southern Ocean slow down and steepen over the reef-strewn shallows creating outstanding surf.  Bells Beach is very popular over the Easter weekend when the world’s best surfers carve up the waves at the Rip Curl Pro Surfing Competition.  We weren’t there over the Easter weekend so we could enjoy the beach without the crowds and see it in all its natural glory.

For Part 3 we’ll be looking at Aireys Inlet – our next stop on the drive to Lorne.  On review of my photo’s, it seems I didn’t drag out my proper DSLR Camera until we reached Apollo Bay, so all photos will be phone shots for a while yet! 

Ciao for now,

 

Link up here at WOTM or with another of us in the Lovin’ Life Linky team:
Leanne of Deep Fried Fruit
Deborah of Debbish | Jo of And Anyways
It doesn’t matter where you link up as it will magically appear on all our blogs.

 

Inlinkz Link Party