Australia Day 3 - Still Exploring Victoria

We actually set an alarm today so that we could go on a relatively early walk on the roads and trails around Bimbi before setting off on the Great Ocean Road (GOR) again.

Right off the bat we found a koala but it appeared that it failed to set an alarm:


The next one we found was wide awake though and we got a really nice view of it...


As it scratched every inch of its body:


We ended up seeing 4 koalas and since we went a different direction than the night before we counted all of them as new which made 14 total for the trip so far.

After the walk, we climbed into the car and ventured down the GOR again to check out some scenery.  Along the way, we met some other creatures out "cruising":


I took that last picture in the parking area for The 12 Apostles which is a must see area along the GOR. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty overcast which didn't make for great pictures but we made the best of it and the scenery was still pretty dramatic.





Looking the other direction:


Despite signs like these, The 12 Apostles stop was VERY popular:




If they had a sign up that said "No Selfies Allowed" most of the people we saw wouldn't have known what to do with themselves.  That's a human behavior that I just don't understand...

We made some additional stops along the GOR to see more of the beautiful coastline.

The Razorback:


Loch Ard Gorge:


We made it along the GOR as far as Port Campbell.  We planned to have a late lunch there and spent way too much time debating between the empty restaurant with the better menu or the popular restaurant with the more limited menu.  The latter had .2 better rating on Google so we choose it because we needed a tie breaker.  But, that ended up being a mistake.  I think we all felt that our lunch was the worst of the trip at the "popular" place.  To cleanse our palates, we got ice cream afterwards and that made it all better.

We made it back to Bimbi in the late afternoon and took a short walk around the grounds which really paid off since in some light rain we found one of the rarer cockatoos.

Gang Gang Cockatoo:


Female:


We also had a great look at a cooperative kookaburra:


We had dinner in Apollo Bay again and returned with plans to do another night walk.  The walk started out nicely with this brushy:


But, soon after that the rain started to fall and we rushed back to our respective cabins and called it a night which was smart since the rain didn't stop for a while after that.