After flying back from Cairns we spent a couple of days in Melbourne, visiting the city and getting chance to catch up over a BBQ (English-style inside as it rained) with some friends who we last saw 4 years ago.

We have decided to spend our final couple of weeks here in Victoria so have headed down to the Great Ocean Road. This is a stretch of road covering almost 300km which was not built as a means of getting from A to B, but was hand-built by returned First World War soldiers as a memorial to their fallen comrades. Opened in 1932 it must be one of the most scenic drives in the world, hence why we are here again despite having driven here on our last trip to Australia.

Gt Ocean Rd – Plaque

Gt Ocean Rd

The campervan is no more, so we now have a little hire car and are finding accommodation as we go. Last night was particularly successful, as having arrived in Lorne, one of the small towns, we went to the Tourist Information Office to see what was available. They told us of a hotel about1km along the coast where they had rooms starting at $Aus68 (about 46 pounds) per night, on special offer (it’s fairly low season here now as the school holidays are long finished). The very jovial man on reception said he had a basic room for $68, an ocean view for $90 or a king ocean view room with spa bath for $120. Having seen the rooms we said we liked the $90 one but it was a bit over our budget so (after a bit of a charm offensive) he ended up letting us have the very best room for $80 – bargain! Even better was when we looked on the internet later and found the full price for the room should be $255 – super bargain!!

Hotel guest

Back to our more normal levels of accommodation today though – we are staying at a campsite in a little old caravan for $50 a night. ‘Little old caravan’ doesn’t really do it justice though as it’s better inside than out and has been revamped to make a very cosy little space complete with kitchen and double bed. Best of all are the koalas which frequent this area – at the moment there are three in the tree just next to our caravan. We are staying here in Cape Otway for at least three nights and going to do some bush walking – again this is somewhere where we have visited before except last time we stayed in a luxury cottage down the road – that was a) when we both had jobs, and b) hadn’t spent several weeks in Southern Italy, so were slightly more picky!

Caravan shack accommodation

Inside Caravan

Inside Caravan

Campsite Neighbour

Paul’s idea of budget accommodation

Cape Otway

From here we will continue down the Gt Ocean Rd before joining Paul’s brother and his family next weekend camping in the Grampians for the labour day weekend. It’s the last public holiday of the summer, and our last weekend in Australia (for this trip!).