Feb. 20

Okay - now I know you all are tired of the word BEAUTIFUL but yesterday we saw the most beautiful sights! We took a day trip - and it was all day, over 12 hours - along the Great Ocean Road west from Melbourne. The road was built during the depression by WWI veterans - kind of like our CCC projects. It goes along the coastline - often on cliffs well above the ocean. The views are magnificent. It twists and turns and goes up and down and Ginnie wore herself out helping the bus driver stay on the road! The driver even joked about his co-drivers in the front seat! We were driving through one section of Eucalyptus trees when the bus pulled over so that we could see koalas in the wild - there they were just up in the trees eating which is about all they do. Koala - in Aborigine - means animal who doesn’t drink or something like that. Koalas get all the moisture they need from the eucalyptus leaves. You will have to look hard at that picture to see the koala! We stopped for lunch in a nice beach town at a restaurant with a view that was spectacular. The coast line is not at all over built the way any coast line in America is. Ginnie was talking to the guide who said you could get a nice acre of land near where we were overlooking the ocean for about $60,000 - that would be per square foot and not half so pretty on most of America’s coast! Then on to the main attractions for the day. We stopped at a National Park called The Twelve Apostles. You had to walk a ways to see the 12 Apostles so Ginnie took a HELICOPTER ride! Can you believe it?!!! I, of course, decided that we need pictures from both perspectives and stayed firmly planted on the ground! Pictures are included. The cliffs and the pillars and the arches are mammoth and magnificent. It is also called the shipwreck coast - many shipwrecks along the cliffs. Even one that they discovered in the mid-1800s that dated from the 1500s. After the Twelve Apostles we went to Loch Ard Gorge where a couple of teenagers were the only two to survive a shipwreck. The pictures included show, from the air, the gorge with a pillar in its entrance and from the ground you can see it is an arch! After Loch Ard Gorge we went to a small beach town called Port Campbell for afternoon tea. Then on to our last sight - London Bridge. It was a formation that had two arches and was connected to the mainland until 1991 when the arch closest to the mainland collapsed into the sea. The people in the area feared that many would be dead because people were allowed to walk out to the end of the arches. But when it collapsed that morning there were only two people on the arch and they were stranded until a helicopter came to pick them up. They were lucky - but then again maybe not so lucky since their respective spouses thought they were off on business trips and their pictures were splashed all over the news! On they way back to Melbourne we took an interior highway and it too was beautiful - great rolling hills with dairy farms all over. We didn’t get back to the ship until about 8:45 so it was a couple of beers and bar snacks for dinner. Then bed. Fantastic day! On to Adelaide where our ex-tablemates are going to give us a tour since they both live there.