I woke up early to depart on my Great Ocean Road road trip. I wanted to make sure I would be able to drive to the other side of Melbourne before the traffic got bad.

I drove to Torquay, the starting point of the Great Ocean Road, which is more than an hour southwest of Melbourne. Torquay is famous for its surf beaches, and it is home to the headquarters of Rip Curl and Quicksilver, two major surf equipment brands. I went to visit a couple of the beaches before getting lunch at Bettys Burgers, and then departed down the Great Ocean Road.

I drove a couple hours down the coast and was treated to some fantastic views of the coast from the side of the cliff. Unfortunately there were not a lot of great opportunities to pull over and take photos, aside from the Memorial Arch, which looks like it should be at the entrance of the Great Ocean Road, but is really located more than half an hour after Torquay. As I continued down the road, it became a bit hazy and harder to see because of moisture from the tide.

After a couple hours I made it to Great Otways National Park and went to Erskine Falls, a very scenic waterfall located at the bottom of a few hundred stairs.

I continued down the road to Apollo Bay and checked into the YHA there, where I would be spending the night. About 90 minutes before sunset I set off back to Great Otways National Park to Lake Elizabeth, which is regarded as one of the best places to see platypus in Victoria. The platypus tend to come out around dusk to go hunting for food, which they detect with electric receptors in their beaks. I hiked about half an hour from the parking lot to the lake, and spent around thirty minutes looking around, but couldn't find any sign of a platypus.

I headed back to Apollo Bay and arrived after dark. Since it was after 8pm there was only one restaurant open, a Chinese restaurant called Dragon Bay Inn. I couldn't decide what to order and settled on Hokkien Mee, which was pretty mediocre.