Our rental car from Melbourne was upgraded to an Audi and our rental place in Apollo Bay was upgraded from the 2 to 3 bedroom place in lower floor this house. Better yet, the house was stocked with kid friendly toys, books and videos. Daniel devoured 3 books, Charlie built a Duplo pyramid to make the Egyptians proud and Molly thoroughly enjoyed Disney's Mary Poppins over the 2 nights we were there. Charlie liked it, but was nervous about who the bad guys were. I got to run on the Apollo Bay beach, with only a fisherman on my path.
On our last morning, they watched some Looney Tunes before we packed up and headed west on the Great Ocean Road in search of the 12 Apostles. We liked the eastern part of the Great Ocean Road, but nothing really prepared us for the views from this part. The mighty Pacific carved away the stone so that pillars (really big ones...) are left standing.

So, here are some photos - there are no longer 12 Apostles, the ocean finishes the erosion it starts eventually. I'm not sure the pictures can do it justice - really, really, really, really impressively beautiful.






According to Bill Bryson's book "In a Sunburned Country", there are also 1200 ship wrecks below these friendly seas. One of the walks we did around the Loch Ard Gorge had a story about the wreck in the 1800s of the Loch Ard that had only 2 survivors. Eva, 18, was rescued by the other survivor Tom, also 18 in the bay where the kids are rock climbing. Charlie was so moved, he suggested we write a song about it. Have the Muppets done that already?







This is Muttonbird Island, so green and peaceful, where the Loch Ard met its fate. It's also home to a large colony of Muttonbirds in Australia's summer and spend their Australian winters in Alaska's summer. They take their snow birding seriously here!


We also pulled off the Great Ocean Road to see the Arch and London Bridge.
London Bridge used to have two arches, then one day in 1990, the one closest to the shore collapsed. The crazy part is that two people were out on top of the far arch. They were completely unharmed (physically, at least) but had to be rescued a few hours later via helicopter.

Can you get the tune of London Bridge in your head (and then out of it...)?


And, that's the end of our trip! We had a very late flight from Melbourne to Sydney so we ate in a suburb of Melbourne called Williamston. It was on the water, but we didn't appreciate it much because we had the flight to catch. We couldn't resist pulling over to get a picture of the store sign in Williamston - sadly, it was closed, so we couldn't see what we were missing back in Michigan.



It was Father's Day in Australia and the kids celebrated by acting wild and crazy in the back of the rental car while we tried to find the airport in the dark. The threat of no dessert for a week finally settled them down. We do love our Australian biscuits!!