The Great Ocean Road

One of the things on my list was to go and make the drive on The Great Ocean road on the most Southern coastline of Australia's mainland.
To get there I had to rent a car and found that like in Sydney, all the car rental companies were conveniently located on the same street at the hostel, perfect. I got myself a bright red Hyundai mini something, which looked promising when I got in, really nice and better quality than expected. I left at around 11 in the morning from Melbourne with my little red car, behind a wheel for the first time in 4 months, ready to tackle the left hand driving situation - uh oh.
Also I had not any insurance on the car except minimum requirement, so if something would happen I was going to cough up around $1500. That might not have been a wise choice after all.
I got out of the garage and probably made my first offense already, crossing a lot of parking lots in the middle of the street, but I knew where the GPS wanted to take me, I wasn't ready for those intersections with the pull to the left on a right hand turn just yet, haha. The car for some reason (or was it me?) wanted to be located very left in the lane, but after a few minutes I got it figured out. Left hand driving was not that difficult, seems like a combination of concentration and relaxing. Never relax too much and be prepared.
A couple of times I had to do a left turn off the road in the last second, then there is no time to thing, it is just a reflex - and then the windshield wipers start to go, haha. Also the roundabout requires a little concentration, didn't want to go around the wrong way (again)

The Great Ocean Road itself was built by war veterans returning back from World War I, as a memorial to the lives of those Australian soldiers who didn't make it home. Before it was built, the cities along the coast could only be accessed by the rough sea, or over land but without any roads.

It follows the rugged coast line for a couple of hundred kilometers and offers some quite spectacular views all along the coast. The most dramatic coast line as it said on a sign. There were miles and miles of cliff dropping vertically down to an ocean eating away the cliffs slowly.

There there were the nicest sand beaches with the clearest waters sheltered by cliffs that extended out a couple of hundred meters in the ocean. There are many very cool places along the coast and a lot of places to stop for a few minutes and admire nature at work. 

At the very most Southern part of Australia's mainland, there is a lighthouse that people could climb up into for $20. That was a little expensive, but now I drove this far, might as well get up there. It was super windy up there, normally it takes a lot to move me around, but here I felt very light going with the wind. One woman lost her sunglasses and a scarf, when taking a picture of her boyfriend, the wind simply pulled them off her head and face.

The road to the light house went through some Eucalyptus forests, and in the trees there were plenty of these small bears, Koala bears that is. Not very active, rather lazy guys, but they seemed to be able to hang on to the trees while taking a nap, even though there were strong winds moving the tree around.
The GPS quickly ran out of power and I pulled out the cable to charge the GPS unit, and found a cable that didn't fit the GPS... Argh, come on, that was lousy. So I had to rely on the GPS in my phone it seemed, Nokia maps!?!? That was going to be a total disaster and nightmare.
The car was jumping in the corner whenever hitting a hole or something when pushed just a little bit. That was scary. Next thing to fix in Korean cars are their suspension
Eventually I made it to the end of the road through wind, rain and sun around 88 in the evening. I wanted a good meal and refused to go for any fast food or cafeteria food.
Found a real restaurant and ordered the usual, big steak with pepper sauce, medium rare as always. I was so hungry had only gotten a few müsli bars, so this was lunch and dinner combined. I got a over well done steak that was so dry it is like a pork chop the next day. I left a slice of the middle for the cook to see and told the main waitress/owner? that I actually ordered it medium rare. She checked the order and went to the kitchen and came back and told me "yes, you ordered it medium rare. Sorry about that" Then she went to prepare my bill and I thought there would be a small discount, but nothing. WTF? That moment I really missed my regular meat house in San Diego, ironically enough called Outback Steakhouse

Well, apart from the leather steak I got, I can highly recommend the drive, it is fun, it is long and there are some pretty awesome views that the camera can not really catch.