Great Ocean Road

I took a two day trip out to the coast of Victoria to tour the Great Ocean Roads and to visit lots of Aussie animals and PENGUINS! I left with Trips and Tours from RMIT again. We ended up getting Ben again, the tour guide from the last trip I took to the Grampian Mountains. This time we had people from Canada, Chez Republic, Greece, Germany, Japan, Brazil, America, and Australia. It was a pretty diverse group.

We started at the 12 Apostles after almost a 3 hour drive. The 12 Apostale are rock formations in the ocean that are separated from the shore line wall. They are actually 9 and not 12. Not really sure why they are called 12 when there were only ever 9. Now there are only 8 as on of them has fallen down. The landscape was awesome. It reminded me of Arizona and the beach mixed together.

The Great Ocean Road is where over 3/4 of the ship crashes happen along the coast of Australia. This is because there are lots of cliffs and rock walls. There are only a few spots that have beach areas and they hard to get into with out smashing into rock. We went to where the ship the Lord Ard crashed. Everyone but two people died in that crash. They were able to swim to the small shore between two rock walls and they stayed in a cave overnight before climbing the rock wall the next day to get out. In the picture in the middle, you can see the small space the ship tried to sail through.

We then went to basically a rest stop that had lots of wild birds and had wild koala bears. Koala bears are only awake for about 4 hours of the day and those 4 hours are basically spent eating. We actually got to see a koala bear in action! The birds were really cool. We got to see a kookaburra. That is the white and grey bird. I had a King Parrot land on my head too!

The next day we went to Maru Sanctuary and got to see more animals! We got to get up close, pet, and feed kangaroos, wallabies, Tasmanian devils, emus, dingos, possums (much cuter and nicer here in OZ), birds, and koala bears.

Bushtail Possum

Dingo

Emu

Tasmanian Devil

After the sanctuary, we headed to Seal Rock. We were able to look at the seals on a TV. There were video cameras that we could control to see them and zoom in and out. They were so cute and they move so goofily. The females are adorable and the males are gigantic and a little scary. I would not want to run into one of them in the wild. They are amazingly pretty fast, even on land.

We then went to Phillip Island to see the Little Penguins come ashore and go to their burrows. They were super little and very social. They liked playing with each other and made a lot of noise. We could not take pictures or video of the penguins. If someone were to accidentally set off their flash, it can blind the penguins. So they don't take the chance and say no cameras. It was fun watching them glide on their stomachs as the water washed them ashore. Then when they were on land, they would waddle in a line. It was so funny. One would stop and all the ones behind him would bump into the other. Then they would look around frantically, trying to figure out what happened. It was awesome experience and I wish Christy was there with me to witness it. :)