Day 13 – The Australian Mainland

The state of the Tasmanian roadway system, combined with the way the locals drive, conspired to bring me to my wit’s end during the two hour drive from Cradle Mountain to the airport. I was in no mood for today’s planned itinerary – driving. But the flight over took my mind off of driving when the pilot mentioned that the reason for plane was vibrating and making weird sounds was because of all the ice on the propellers flying off and hitting the sides of the plane. Happy we’re done with small aircraft for this trip (with the possible exception of a helicopter trip to the Great Barrier Reef).

When we landed in Melbourne, we discovered that our car reservations were for Melbourne, Florida and not Melbourne, Australia. The two girls at the Hertz counter had literally never even heard the word “Chevrolet” that was on the confirmation sheet we’d printed out. Either way, we got a car, a Toyota Aurion (which I’d never heard of…).

Spent the next five hours driving the Great Ocean Road from Melbourne to Apollo Bay. Not so great weather, but lots of interesting things to see along the way.

We’ve now officially seen everything but a platypus here.

Nice view along the coast:
I saw a koala bear and the koala bear looked at me...
Echidna!
These seemed a little more exotic in the wild than in the marina begging for food...
Full disclosure: we took these kangaroo pics on a golf course.
Rental cars come in all colors of the rainbow - that's us there in the middle.