southern shores

I saw in this new year in proper holiday mode. As expected, by the time Christmas rolled around I’d had about as much of the endless buildup heat as I could take, so I gave myself a break and headed down south to drive Victoria’s Great Ocean Road.

Myself and a few friends spent several days in the quaint seaside town of Port Fairy, on the Victorian coast, and did the drive back to Melbourne along the coastal road over a couple of days (via a short camping stint in Blanket Bay, nestled in the Otways forest).

It was refreshing to see how clean and unspoiled the beaches of Port Fairy are, quite busy but not packed. I had to hunt pretty hard to spot any beach trash. And the cool and crystal clear water was the perfect antidote to a mini heatwave that rolled through early in the new year. The Otways were also simply stunning, though should come with a traffic advisory warning to Watch for Tourists as every koala near the roadside had a collection of hastily parked cars and a gaggle of excited tourists crowding around. The smell of these eucalypt forests is amazing – although we have our fair share of gum trees in the north, they don’t hold the fragrance in the same way of the cooler southern temperate forests.