Dave & Dana in Australia

The Great Ocean Road that is, and it is a really nice drive.  On Saturday morning we flew down to Melbourne and rented a car for a weekend driving along the Great Ocean Road on the Southern coast of Australia.  Since we were to be driving the whole weekend along winding coastal roads, we thought we should do so in style.

What a beautiful area of the country.  Melbourne airport down to the coast is nothing special itself, but once we arrived in Torquay on the coast things were beautiful.  We had a nice lunch and went to the surf museum there - there’s even a hall of fame!  Just down the road is the famous (especially if you remember Point Break) Bells Beach, which has some seriously large and consistent waves.  It also has some seriously icy cold water since it comes from Antarctica, but that doesn’t seem to phase the surfers.  From there we began a beautiful coastal drive for two hours or so down to our base for the night, Apollo Bay.  We had a beautiful cottage in the hills above the bay, also among a bunch of sheep and lambs and the largest spider I’ve so far seen in Aus.  A fantastic dinner at a hilltop restaurant on the coast made it a really nice night.

The next day we continued down the road, again with incredible scenery until we reached the twelve apostles, a series of rock towers that have been eroded out of the coastal cliffs.  Really cool stuff, and we took the time to stop for lunch and a snack on a cove beach before heading back toward Melbourne.  On the way saw a couple of koala bears and something called an Echidna, which is a monotrine.  We also stopped at a tree-top walk in the forest - and holy cow was this high up.  All should be proud of Dana although she wasn’t quite able to go up to the 47 metre platform.  From there it was back to Melbourne and a relaxing night in the hotel before Dana was off back to Sydney and I was off to meetings.

So here’s where I take 5 minutes out of my busy schedule in which I get to watch no Toronto (or North American for that matter) sports and offer my predictions for the Leafs and Raps this year. 

Leafs: 96 points - 7th playoff seed.  Mats stuns us all and gets 100+ points. 

Raps: 37 wins - 10th in the East but becoming the team that no one wants to play down the stretch. 

I could have just come out and said they were both going to win it all, but that wouldn’t have been realistic (plus, I got burned on that last year). 

Anyway, does anyone else think it’s funny that, without being able to watch any NFL I’m still near the lead of my football pool after 6 weeks? 

The past couple of weeks have Dana arrive back in town and the two of us falling back into the work routine.  The weather is really starting to come up nice, and we’ve had 4 or 5 30-plus degree days already.  We went on a nice hike in the Blue Mountains recently near a place called Blackheath - pictures are below. 

Dana’s birthday came and went, with us celebrating with a nice lunch at Café Sydney with a beautiful harbour view, as well as a nice weekend in Melbourne next week (see below).

Looking ahead, we’re quite excited about our plans for the rest of the year in terms of road trips.  In a week’s time we’ll be flying down to Melbourne and driving the Great Ocean Road on the weekend prior to a business trip I have there.  In November Dale will join us for a trip up to Fraser Island (along with a Land Rover to drive around the sand dunes).  Finally, over the Christmas holiday break we will be heading down to Tasmania to do the Overland track, a famous 5 day hike in the mountains.