Great Ocean Road #HogsAbroad in Bali

So, picking up from where I left off before, because I got tired. I went to St. Kilda, which was really nice. It was sunny and warm and I didn’t need to wear five layers. I walked along the beach and the reserve. I went looking for penguins on the pier and finished my afternoon at the market.

Melbourne skyline from St. Kilda pier

I rode the tram back in and had an early night- spent most of the time planning for today. The Great Ocean Road. Rachael, the girl I’ve been running around with, and I wanted to see if we could do it only on public transport instead of with a private company. We got up early to catch the train just a bit after 8 am and did the first leg- which is simply getting to the starting point. That took an hour and a half by itself.

gorgeous coastline

Then we switched over to buses. The first one was three hours and didn’t have any tourist stops, but it did have great views. We got to see kangaroos and whales! There weren’t as many people as we thought that there would be. We were the only tourists- everyone else was a local using the route. We chalked it up to weather; it was raining off and on all day. We did a really good job at avoiding the showers.

We grabbed a quick lunch in Apollo Bay and then hopped on the next bus. This one was almost four hours, but did have several stops along the way. We waited and waited for the bus to fill up but it didn’t. We were the only two people for the whole route. We ran into lots of charter buses and tourists along the way, but that bus was our castle for a short time. It was fantastic.

We did all the major stops- the 12 Apostles, Loch and Gorge, London Bridge and Bay of Islands. We had to keep to a pretty strict time table, since it was public transport. However, we got to see the main points at each site. We even saw some penguins at Bay of Islands! So many animals in one day. We finished the route around 5 pm, and then had an hour before our train would take us back to Melbourne.

The return trip only took 4 hours, but we were starving at the end of it. All of the restaurants were closed so we went to the store and got stuff to make some dinner and then rushed back to our accommodation so we could make it before the kitchen closed. Now, it’s time for bed. Today was exhausting!
Ta for now :)





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Claire Beach will be traveling to several countries during her International Service Learning Program this summer. Her ultimate destination will be a seven-week stay in Indonesia where she will be observing and conducting research for her project, Community Nature and Conservation, through the Honors College.

Beach is studying economics and international business in Walton College. She is observing and conducting research on the profitability of ecotourism business and environmental preservation in other parts of the globe, particularly developing countries. She will be attending the School of International Training. You can read more from Claire at hogtrailsandtales.wordpress.com.

Find out more about the SIT Indonesia: Community Nature Conservation in Bali (Summer) program at http://studyabroad.sit.edu/programs/summer/summer-2016/abe/