Naturally, one of the two showers doesn't work. There must be a lesson here regarding the cost of accomodation and the quality. We do only suffer an AU$10 loss on the cancellation though which is a huge bonus. We book oursleves into Lorne YHA, partway down the Great Ocean Road and head across town to the Shrine of Remembrance (to the war dead) and Botanical Gardens over the road.
A neat way of giving the visitor a feel for the huge numbers involved is simply by having a dedication on each of the trees around to one of the Australian regiments involved in a conflict. And there are a lot of trees. The shrine is a sort of ziggurat (assuming that's the term) set up so that at 11am on the 11th of the 11th the sun shines through the roof window onto the dedication plaque below (Egyptian pyramid theorists take note). They emulate this every half hour with a lamp and a wobbly mirror and on this occaision we were the hapless couple roped in for the playing of the Last Post. I'm quite happy to "remember" those who gave their lives but I didn't feel enormously comfortable with being dragged front and centre to do so. Unless it was just so we could see the libbly light and mirror stunt who's artificiality lessens the sentiment.
The Lonely Planet says the Botanic Gardens are a great place to picnic, something that remains true today with almost everyone (except us) lugging a coolbox and blanket into the gardens. The Gardens encompass at the gate the old observatory who's job was to telegraph the correct time into town and predict the weather. What's left is a modern electronic weather station and display telling us that it was 29.3C, 31% humidity and 5.6 mm of evaporation had occurred in the previous 24 hours with no rain falling in reply [sounds like an English cricket result]. Phew, what a scorcher. We targetted the Terrace Tea Rooms on the far side and tramped in. A large fruit bat colony (6-20 thousand) has made it's home here since the mid 80s which are pretty for us but they destroy the gardens. Their endangered status means the gardeners can't dispose of them as efficiently as they want and they're left trying to coax the bats to a new specially prepared site elsewhere. How do you do that? The Terrace Tea Rooms were shockingly expensive (AU$8 for a sandwich).
We attempted the [Australian] Grand Prix circuit [in Albert Park] but there's barriers up and it's not that obvious -- they don't sell it well, actually, at all. We tootled down to Torquay, surf city, where frankly it looked a bit flat even though the radio said there'd been a competition on. We had a very nice lunch in a local cafe before heading on down to Anglesea to start the Great Ocean Road proper. Not a proper road originally. Someone decided that the dodgy coach runs between towns could do with joining up to make a world class scenic road. It does seem to offer more viewing opportunities than every road we've driven in Australia so far (not hard) even if the stopping points are as poorly labelled. We tame Brits are used to being told where we can stop. I'm wondering if the Aussie stops wherever his car will fit. There are lots of beaches (on the run to Lorne) with sandy beaches with easy boogie board riding waves though when we tested the water my gut feel was that a wetsuit was necessary rather than optional.
Our "double" at the YHA was two singles in a loft room. The door to the loft opened onto a one person area with a vertical ladder. Don't want to be carrying too much up there!
Lorne YHA, Lorne S38.53402 E143.97307 Elev. 25m
note vertical ladder to loft area
There are some very noisy (and particularly unmelodious) cockatoos here which the YHA encourage by leaving a tin of seed for people to distribute. I'm not sure I approve. We did see a pair of Kookaburras just outside the kitchen window. "Friendly" possum might appear at night.
I forgot to mention Melbourne's "hook right turn," a driving code that rivals the French priorite a droite (steam down road and come crashing to a halt because some numbskull is wanting to pull their 2CV out of a field). Here at certain intersections to turn right you're required to go into the left lane, signal right then wait until the coast is clear. Uh? In practice it works badly on quiet Sunday afternoons. But rush hour? Not only do the right turners not go anywhere but the left turners are blocked in too! Cue tailback and instant gridlock. When you do think you have a chance you then have more of an intersection to edge across looking for cars coming from behind as well as in front. A couple of cars might get through when the lights turn red but that's hardly keeping the traffic moving.
Copyright 2003 Ian Fitchet. All rights reserved.