Boxing Day

For Boxing Day, we decided to see some of the area around Melbourne.

When I had visited earlier, we went to see the Twelve Apostles on The Great Ocean Road.  There were some amazing views on the trip, so we thought we would try it again.

We drove out pretty early since it is a long trip.  It was a cold windy day.  I think the high was 15 or so with a stiff wind from the water.

We stopped in Torquay to see the beaches, but didn't last too long since it was so cold out.  There were lots of surfers out in wetsuits, and I guess the conditions would be great for surfing, since the waves were quite high due to the wind.

We stayed on the Great Ocean Road and made our way past winding roads, cliffs, and lighthouses.  It was very nice, but slow going since we needed to slow down so much around every sharp corner.  Google said it would be 3.5 hours, but it was much slower than that due to traffic and curves.

We stopped in Lorne for lunch.  It is a very nice oceanside town and is probably worth more time.  It was very busy though, and we needed to keep moving so we could make it to the Apostles.

We stopped near the Apostles, and we able to take some stairs to the beach to see them from one side.  It was picturesque but still cold!  The kids had fun running from the big waves as we strolled down the beach a bit. 

We drove on to the main site for the Apostles.  I had remembered being able to go down stairs to the main beach to stand right amongst them.  But I goes that in the 15 years since, the Twelve has been reduced to Ten since some of them have fallen.  To keep it more safe, they now have a big visitor center, and walkways to see them from above.  There isn't any more beach access, which was a bit of a let down.  There was also a very big crowd there - at least a thousand or so tourists also thought Boxing Day was a good touring day.