Great Ocean Road; Mt. Kosciuszko; Canberra

It's been a while, but...finally...here are the pictures of the Great Ocean Road, Mt. Kosciuszko, and Canberra that we promised oh so long ago. But, I accidentally erased about 12 pictures from this leg of our journey...technology and I just don't get along.

GREAT OCEAN ROAD:


As you can see our trip along the Great Ocean Road, Australia's answer to California's Hwy. 101, started out splendidly! We got a flat tire about 80 km. out of Melbourne. But nothing could stand between us and the ocean vistas, sheer cliffs, koalas, quaint towns, and famous surfing beaches so touted by Victorians, so we quickly performed some tyre maintenance and went merrily on our way.

We decided in the interest of time and money (the GOR is a tourist trap with expensive accommodation) to hit the whole thing in one day, stopping at the standards and moving along. This isn't really that hard to do, since it's pretty short. Our first stop was an amazing 20 minute walk through a rain forest. I thought all the rain forest environments were in the north, but it turns out that they also have temperate rain forests in the south.

























Then Mike spotted our first koala. He was on a tree branch directly over the road, and just his little head was sticking out from behind the branch. It was really funny because it looked like he was contemplating suicide hanging right over the road like that and looking down at the road. We took a turn off at the advice of our Lonely Planet book and drove for another few kilometers before we hit the jackpot of koala habitat. Within one km. we saw at least 10 koala...we were so excited. I hereby claim NO responsibility for the long term effects of the next series of pictures BLOWING YOUR MIND. We went a little koala crazy:



The light stinks in the picture, but this little guy was climbing the tree, and stopped to inspect us.























This one was walking across the road at a leisurely pace as we were driving by. They look really funny when they walk because we're so used to seeing them in trees.













This was by far the most awesome thing we saw on the entire GOR. It's a mamma koala (right) clutching her baby (left) as they both sleep, in case you can't see because of the shadows. They just sat there sleeping and hugging, hugging and sleeping.











We took a sunset stroll along the beach.


















The most photographed spot in all of Australia, the Twelve Apostles, are actually only 7 rocks that jut out of the ocean right off shore.



















MT. KOSCIUSZKO:


We arrived at Mt. Kosciuszko National Park on Tuesday after hightailing it from the Great Ocean Road and Melbourne that morning. We found a sweet campsite thanks to a really funny local guy who talked fast and knew a lot about the park. The ranger station was closed, so he let us in on all the tips. We camped in a valley next to a huge open field. At dusk, hundreds of kangaroos came out to feed in the field, and one of them even tried to take our dinner.








Here's a picture of the sneaky little guy. I thought he was going to pounce, but we scared him off with rocks.
















Mike was set on hiking the tallest mountain in Australia, Mt. Kosciusko...you know...that man vs. nature thing. =) It's only 2,228 meters tall (~7000 ft.) but it still felt like a mountain. Especially since we decided to forgo the trail and hike straight up. There is a ski lift that runs during the summer taking lazy tourists halfway up the mountain leaving them to hike the remaining 13 k on a metal grade hiking track (booo!! too easy!), but we need all the exercise we can get these day without ultimate training everyday. Turns out, it's also $23 round trip a person for the sweet ride to the halfway point. We told ourselves that we weren't taking the Gondola because it wouldn't count as hiking the mountain, but really we were just too cheap.


We climbed up the steep grade that followed the ski lift to the walking track and had an easy climb the rest of the way. The flies were awful almost the whole way up, but the view was nice. All the valleys to the west were full of smoke from the bush fires, but the eastern valleys were visible. The landscape was interesting. There weren't any trees, even though I think it's still under tree line...it was more like a boulder strewn tundra with small hardy plants and streams running through lichen covered rocks. We also saw the highest alpine lake in Australia on our way up. We ate lunch at the top (I deleted the picture...booo) and started the long trek down to make it to Canberra before dark.















CANBERRA:

We got into Canberra, the capital of Australia, on Wednesday, Dec. 13th, just after hiking Mt. Kosciusko. We got in just in time to eat some delicious sushi and check out the small quadrant of coolness in the city. There was a national park nearby so we decided to camp out there for the night.



The view of the Parliament House from the National War Memorial monument and museum. The Parliament is actually built into a hill, so almost all of the building is underground. It's pretty sweet.















Wall of Remembrance "Field of Poppies". The National War Memorial. Very pretty and moving to walk through.










We stayed at a pretty shady hotel above a pub, but the pub was great...cold beer and delicious potato wedges, plus they were playing the Ashes (a cricket tournament with Britain that we've become enamored with) on huge television screens. We did some more Christmas/Hanukkah shopping during the day, visited the Parliament (amazing designs in and out) and National War Memorial, and went to the National Museum of Australia, which I have to say we were both very impressed with. It's the best museum I've ever been to, and while it's probably better from a visitors perspective, I've talked to many Australians that also think very highly of it.



The hotel we stayed at was above this pub.