Great Ocean Road

Just some miscellaneous photos from the Great Ocean Road...

Yikes! a velociraptor

A tower to look at some trees

foggy day in the rainforest

treetop walk

Apollo Bay



A sleepy Koala in his tree.

Melbourne or bust!


Hard work to build this road...

A famous lighthouse from some children's show...

Bells Beach... famous for having the longest running surf tournament.

Surf Museum in Torquay

Twelve Apostles

Even more rocks! This time the Twelve Apostles. They're a lot like the Hopewell Rocks. This is the third most popular natural attraction in Australia behind Uluru and Fraser Island.

I went on a short helicopter ride around them which was a lot of fun.


London Bridge... used to have another arch connecting it to the mainland. But in 1992... well London Bridge went falling down.

Grampians

Did a little hiking around the Grampians...

white kangaroos... they are abandoned by their mothers because they look odd





Mount Zero... when the discovered it and comped out on it, it was zero degrees... I think it was the same temperature when I was there.


Mackenzie Falls

Coober Pedy

Took a tour back to Adelaide, stopping off for a night in Coober Pedy.

The first stop was to see Dinky Dingo, a cool dingo that sings when people play piano.

Then we went to Coober Pedy the site of the richest opal mines in the world. Since the temperature in Coober Pedy rises above 45 degrees, and since they have all kinds of mining equipment, most people on Coober Pedy live underground. The borough caves in the sides of hills and then furnish the caves as houses. Underground it stays a constant room temperature while outside it can range from -5 degrees to over 45 degrees.

piles of dirt dug out looking for opals

The spaceship from the movie "Pitch Black"


Underground museum


underground kitchen


tunnel dug searching for opals

This glob of opals is probably worth $40,000



an underground gambling operation

a salt lake

the longest man made structure in the world... a dingo fence that stretches across most of Australia

Kings Canyon

The next day we went to King's Canyon, which in many ways was more interesting than Uluru. Also because there is a bit of wind there, the flies aren't so much of a problem. The worst thing about the outback is the flies.

In the middle of the canyon there is a lot of vegetation which was named the Garden of Eden by explorers as they were running out of supplies and would have died had they not found it. Some of the vegetation there have survived from way back when Australia was covered by rainforest, before all the water dried up.

Kings Canyon a sunrise


the path


plant growin in the cracks


the group

a cool looking lizard

nice view

evidence that this used to be at the bottom of the sea.


Garden of Eden

Forbidden Fruit?


Where a chunk of rock fell of 70 years ago

back to Alice Springs