We left Bali late in the night and continued our journey through to Melbourne. Our initial plan was to fly straight to New Zealand, however we felt that given the fact that we traveled all the way from the Netherlands, we just cannot skip Australia. A very short stop of 5 days would be enough to get a feeling for it and maybe have some inspiration when planning our next trip there. We decided to travel on the Great Ocean Road, from Melbourne to Port Campbell National Park.

The next day early in the morning we arrived in Melbourne, picked up the rental car and headed South towards Apollo Bay where we booked an apartment. We stopped at the first place along the ocean: Torquay.  Despite a bit of tiredness or maybe thanks to it😊 this was such a special morning! The first image I saw when exiting the car were white cockatoos, really beautiful birds that I have only seen in captivity. Then, the first place we checked out for lunch happened to be a fantastic café ( Cafe Moby) with many healthy options and a….playground. The poached eggs avocado toast was probably the most delicious toast ever. It’s needless to say that my whole crew was satisfied!:)  In order to complete this picture I will just tell you that across this lovely cafe was a really beautiful beach and….another playground.  The playing and fun moved across the street for a while. I couldn’t have asked for more!

After a while, we continued driving to Anglesea where we stopped at the Anglesea Golf Course. None of us plays golf and we were not planning  to do so, however, we were curious to see the resident kangaroos. I am not sure how happy the gulf players are about the place being open to the curious public. We were taken around in a golf caddy by a very nice lady, a club member volunteer. She told us all we wanted to know about kangaroos, tried not to disturb the golfers too much and made sure we didn’t get hit by flying golf balls:) When we got off we could walk very close to the kangaroos. I found it interesting that they just hang around the course and relax in the shadows and nobody is bothered.  This was our first encounter with kangaroos and we were very enthusiastic. The next 2 days we saw them everywhere.

We left Anglesea and went straight to our accommodation in Apollo Bay. This had a great view over the beach and ocean. We asked around for dinner recommendations and found the Chris’s Beacon, which was conveniently located nearby, was highly recommended.  It would have been nice to finish the evening off by relaxing by the sea, but the near-sleepless night on the plane was catching up on us and going to bed early was just as sweet.