Australia Day 6

Day 6. Today, we are going to do a road trip to the beach. Initially, we planned to rent a car, but it's expensive! Fortunately we found an alternative: cheap open trip. lol.

So the meeting point was on the Arts Centre. I always have this kind of anxiety everytime joining an open trip. Will they really show up at the meeting point? lol. Thankfully, they did.

Another thing that made me worry: weather. It won't be fun if it's cloudy, like when we visited the Bondi Beach. and that morning, we couldnt even see the sight of the sun.

No matter which country you visit, if you go with a tour, you will be brought to at least one partnering store.

In this case, we visited a chocolaterie, that actually quite interesting, since it offered various types of chocolate, such as choco lip balm, 1 metres long chocolate, and so on.

I also remember that in this place, when I wanted to pay and gave my credit card to the cashier, the cashier tapped it onto the machine and nothing worked. Well, sorry ma'am, most of Indo cards hadn't, and haven't been embedded with contactless technology.

My heart was happy seeing the sky turned blue, kinda. lol. Since the cloud was going disarray. But you could't be so sure, right?

The photo was taken from inside of a moving bus

Memorial Arch, the gateway to the Great Ocean Road. The arch was built in honour of the 3,000 returned soldiers who worked on the road and its creation during World War I. .
The sculpture is of two returned soldiers working on the Great Ocean Road. During the construction of the road, some soldiers lost their lives due to the gruelling task of building a road by hand.

We had our lunch at the fish n chips joint on Apollo Bay Seafront. It's basically a rest area like where we could find few restos, souvenir markets, and so on. And no, it's no included in the tour package so we had to buy it ourselves.

I was always ecstatic when seeing the flock of sheeps through the window. hmm I dont think 'flock' is the right term for sheep. Anyway.

Well, the bright sky unfortunately turned cloudy.

Going to The Twelve Apostles.

Finally, we arrived at the famous tourism object. We could see a bit of blue part in the sky, which is good.

Well, the good thing was we didnt have to go thru a challenging pathway to enjoy the view.

Although the name of this object is twelve apostles but actually it was only consisting of 8 limestone stacks (now - by the time I post this, is 7. Read below).

The Twelve Apostles were formed by erosion. The harsh and extreme weather conditions from the Southern Ocean gradually erode the soft limestone to form caves in the cliffs, which then become arches that eventually collapse, leaving rock stacks up to 50 m high. The stacks are susceptible to further erosion from waves. In July 2005, a 50-metre-tall stack collapsed, leaving seven standing at the Twelve Apostles viewpoint.

See what's missing on the board I posted on the n-th slide.

The Twelve Apostles is a collection of limestone stacks off the shore of Port Campbell National Park.

It's kinda interesting to see that the board is written with a poetry, altho I cant really comprehend its meaning.

Were you halted marching south,
or anchored climbing to the beach?
Did you yearn for freedom through the endless years?

Is the mystic Southern Ocean,
yours to rule or empire lost?
The mists around you rain or wasted tears?

Are you prisoners or guardians,
at the clash of rock and wave?
Do you feel us gaze in wonder at your might?

You have seen the stars before us,
and beyond us you will stand.
Forever at the edge, through day and night

Take a moment to stop. Listen and reflect upon how you feel being here today. (well, they're not my words. It's actually written on a board there).

Healthy parks improve your physical, mental, and spiritual health and wellbeing and generate jobs, contributing to productive communities - as shown by you being here now.

At the end of Geology Walk is Razorback. It exemplifies coastal evolution. This massive limestone islet was carved away from the cliff by pounding surf. The point is cracking in two places, preparing to collapse and potentially form sea stacks. In the middle is an indentation. It may take hundreds of years, but eventually this will form a cave followed by an arch. Once that crumbles, huge rock columns will be created. This cycle has been repeated for 15 to 20 million years.

I love the beautiful scenery. But human always wants more. The cloudy sky left me not that fully satisfied. lol. Hey, but at least at the previous spot, the weather was not that bad.

Oh well, Melbourne has a pretty interesting weather I should say. It changes, fast!

Frankly speaking, I want to finish the Great Ocean Road theme soonest, along with the #raustraliatravelog, so I can move to the next one. Bare with me guys...

Ohya, to get to the beach, we had to walk down the stairs. No worries, it's a well paved one.

How I miss sitting on a beach, feeling the sands between my toes, listening to the sound of the sea touching the shore, the breeze, the smell of the ocean. Everything!

Strawberries, purchased at the market on the day before. Actually I was having difficulty to finish them off. lol .
The gorge is named after the clipper ship Loch Ard, which ran aground on nearby Muttonbird Island on 1 June 1878 approaching the end of a three-month journey from England to Melbourne. Of the fifty-four passengers and crew, only two survived: Tom and Eva. .

The feature now appears as two unconnected rock pillars. They have since been officially named Tom and Eva after the two teenage survivors of the Loch Ard shipwreck.

My friend once said that in Melbourne, you could experience 4 seasons in a day. Oh boy, he was no kidding. 
Well, it's actuaĺly not in Melbourne city, but what we encoutered was similar. A second it could be extreme cloudy, and then around 10-15 mins later, the sky turned clear and blue.

Like these photos were taken only 15 mins apart. Guess what, 15 mins later, the sky turned grey again😅

I tried to google on the reasons, it seemed more on the geographical reasons that I'm not eager to fully comprehend. One of them is Melbourne is located among cool temperature south sea and hot desert on its north.

This beach and its cliff somehow reminds me to a beach in West Sumba.

On the way back to Melbourne, and a big city kid like me was, and is always in awe of seeing scenery like this 🤣

I think in some countries, there's this peculiar habit of throwing coins into fountain. Well, correct me if I'm wrong. But we saw many coins were scattered around on the fountain floor, that a homeless person was collecting the coins at night.

Night view