I rented a car and left Melbourne, headed down the Great Ocean Road for the 12 Apostles, a series of rock formations (or examples of negative space left in the wake of erosion?) jutting out of the sea just off the coast.
Initially, I was a tad dismayed to be given a Toyota Avalon instead of the fiery Falcone I was expecting, but I found myself unable to complain when I discovered the tape player (a hold-over from the Communist regime that occupied Australia between the years of 1979 to1989), which enabled me to rock myPod.
Off I sped. As wise women (and the few men who are wise as well) say, it is the journey rather than the destination that brings us to nirvana. While this wisdom might not ring true on a long flight, it certainly played out today.
I was smart enough to consult the map before pulling out into the odd (yet grid-like) traffic patterns of Melbourne, and lucky enough to find the highway by following the directions scrawled on my palm.
I drove through Geelong and on to Torquay, the “Gateway to the Great Ocean Road”. Before too long the road opened up to the coast, and I found myself driving alongside the crystal clear cerulean ocean, which, in the manner of all things Australian to tell little white lies, exuded a deceptive air of warmth strictly through its coloring.
I drove through Eucalyptus groves and over and around cliffs, in a landscape very much reminiscent of California’s Pacific Coast Highway (or Highway One, or Cabrillo Highway, whatever you want to call it) to the south and the north of San Francisco.
My trusty chariot kept the pace
(Just kidding – this is the real deal)
while I did everything in my might to keep the blessed thing on the road.
I came to a small town called Lorne and, running on little more than a blueberry muffin from Hudson’s Coffee ( the Melbourne equivalent of Starbucks – even though they have Starbucks here – for their numerous locations and homogenous atmosphere and standard fare) I stopped for lunch. Reading the paper, I was delighted to find that Bush is falling once more under (and into, let’s hope) fire. Anyway, I had lunch.
Moving on, I tripped along the same coastal road toward Apollo Bay, stopping here and again for the obligatory photo opps. Apollo Bay, I'd read, had been dubbed “Paradise” by none other than Rudyard Kipling. I’ll admit, the town is quite nice, although I’m sure a good deal of development has occurred between his time and ours. But it is nice. Particularly for the fact that its main street bridges the gap between green rolling hills and blue rolling waves.
The two come together in a melee of fish and chip shacks, ice cream parlors, and surf shops. I grabbed one more cup of coffee for the road, and drove on up the hill out of town.
Now, regardless of what the guidebooks say (they’re somewhat partial to oceanfront spread while I, a child of the Green Mountains, find hillside expanses equally breath-taking and mouth-watering) the Great Ocean Road beyond Apollo Bay is on par with the most scenic of drives I have ever made. The road curves up the mountain, inland, passing through green dells and pastures full of feeding cattle, horses, and sheep.
At times the scenery brought to my mind memories of Pescadero; at others it forced recollection of West Marin, in the areas around Bodega, Bolinas, and basically anywhere between the 101 and the Ocean.
A prisoner of two disparate desires: that to, a.) stop and document photographically anything deemed even the slightest bit worthy by its utter beauty (pun very much intended)
and, b.) my need to keep up the pace in order to reach the 12 Apostles by sundown (which falls early here in the Spring in the Southern Hemisphere, and fell tonight at exactly 6:19 pm), I found myself snapping photos as often as I found fit to stop,
and also running roadside to shave seconds off of my trip time.
I found several towns I would happily call home for the rest of my life, or at least for the foreseeable future, among them Glenaire and the two hamlets beyond to the West.
Just past Lavers Hill (the birthplace of Rod?) I came upon a crew crusading to cross a crux of cows across the road.
At this point I was humming along and had stopped so many times prior that I fought the urge to turn around and take a better look for about 10 kilometers. Finally, unable to resist any more, I pulled a U-ey (highly frowned upon in most of the country). Absentmindedly, I pulled into the right-hand lane, before righting (well, lefting, actually) myself, unintentionally flaunting the frequent signage warning the tourist-rife crowd of passersby to lean to the lefty while driving.
This error was quickly righted by any and all of the life-loving cells in my body.
What, exactly, made me turn around? Well, as is often the case, the perfection of the picture captured by my eyes and strored in my brain . . . stuck, and wouldn’t leave me be. As anyone who knows me can attest, I feel the need to document things, sometimes so much so that it grows annoying for those in my company.
But imagine, if you will: A dual-file line of cattle, side by side, a good 200 yards long, easily 500 hundred strong, trampling over green pastures toward the barn, the background a series of rolling hummocks falling off to the surreally blue sea. And imagine: a crook in the line, the cows one by one cornering from one line to the next. Oi vey, the framing would have been perfect. In addition, it dawned on me, through reverse reasoning, that while I could easily Google-image or elsewise draw up images of the 12 Apostles many times over superior to any I might be hoping to take, this shot was mine, and was surely not to be so easily found again. But alas, when I returned, the magnificence of the scene was much diminished, the degree of the able was greatly flattened, and most of the cows were out of sight just over the crest of the hill. So I shot what I could and headed back in the direction of Port Campbell.
Enough about those silly cows and the photo that got away.
Before long I was parking at the Visitor’s Centre for the Apostles, walking down with all of the other yahoos / lookie-loos to shoot some photos, and to ooh and aah before returning to the relative comfort of my vehicle.
The sun was just about to set behind a large cloud that stretched, in every shade of greyscale, to a point just above the horizon. So I hot-footed it.
The Apostles (I failed to make a head count, so I can’t in good conscience verify that there were, indeed, twelve – although since I’ve heard that the numerical label, like many Australian names, is a misnomer) were, indeed, striking, to say the least.
I played around with photographing their splendor from a number of different
snapping off as many photos as possible before the false sunset.
Well, the sun set, if only in a very phony fashion, and I headed back to my ride, pitying as I went the people I passed who were just on their way out to the lookout.
I stopped by the Gibson steps, stepping down to the beach, where I played around with some long-exposure photos. With the results coming up marginal at best,
I tromped back up the cliffs and headed back to Apollo Bay, taken by music and that mood (all too infrequent, these days) which strikes and makes me want to be the best damn driver I can be, even if and when imbibing a beer.
So here I sit, gnocchi with pine nuts, pesto, spinach, kalamatas and ricotta banging on the doors of my intestine like six siblings fighting for the bathroom before school, while Shiraz graces my gullet, happy to have writ, and even happier to have taken a drive today. Ta!
