The Great Ocean Road, as the name suggests, is a magnificent stretch of coastline across southern Victoria that runs parallel with the Southern Ocean. The road begins about an hour and half outside of Melbourne and ends about four hours later, with most people choosing to stop at the natural wonder sight of The Twelve Apostles just outside the town of Port Campbell.
To be God honestly truthfully, and not taking anything away from the Great Ocean Road, I was more pound for pound impressed with the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The layout of the PCH cuts into the mountains and out along the coast with more sporadic twists and turns. You are in the mountains one minute and greeted with a new spectacular view the next. The GOR was one continuous stretch of a stellar view. I like it…a lot. But the variety of the landscape of the PCH I think gives it a greater appeal. The cool things about the GOR are: 1) staring straight at you just a stone’s throw away is ANTARCTICA. Indeed, the waters of the Southern Ocean are pretty icy year round and according to the locals is a play pen for Great White Sharks. 2) Randomly stopping along the road and catching koalas just chilling out in the wild. Yep, they’re as fat and lazy as they people say they are.
Capping off the GOR is the famous 12 Apostles site – large island rock formations that got chiseled off the mainland from thousands of years of erosion. Some have gotten so chiseled away that in fact there are no longer 12 of them, I think the official count now only has them down to nine. Regardless, it’s the most famous stopping point along the Great Ocean Road that most people officially deem the end of the trip, even though the coastal highway continues on for several more hours. Most recently, I got a weekend dose out of the city in the Dandenong ranges just outside of Melbourne. The local travel books describe it as “lush rainforests” but I sort of scoff at that description considering that where we are is closer to Antarctica than to the tropics. So consider my ability to not get lost in the woods this time as a victory for me. For anyone keeping score at home that is Nature: 1, Naki 1. With plenty of outdoor stuff to do in Victoria, the state has earned the nickname the “Garden State.” Yes, there is plenty of greenery, but clearly whoever thought of that nickname has never been to New Jersey – the real Garden State. With all the weekend travel I have truly mastered the art of driving on the left/wrong side of the wrong. I learned and somewhat mastered stick shift while bouncing around the Netherlands late last year; and left side of the road driving does not phase me anymore. But putting the two together – stick shift and left side of the road driving – is still unventured territory for me. The situation has never arise to force myself to do both since, much to my surprise, Australian cars are almost 95% automatic like in the US. 
Melbourne does have an odd little quirk to its driving rules – two of them actually. In the 50 square block radius of Melbourne’s central business district there is a rule called the “hook-turn.” Keep in mind two things: first, Australians drive on the left/wrong side of the road, remember? Second, outside of Europe, Melbourne has the largest network of trams in the world (tram cars as in public transportation…not trans as in transvestites). True story, look it up. OK, so those two things are necessary in order to understand the hook turn. In the US and the normal driving world, “left yields to right” so when making a left turn at an intersection you wait for thru traffic to pass and then make the left turn, often just as the light is turning red. Flip it around obviously in Australia – “right yield to left” so you wait for thru traffic to pass and then make the right turn often when the light turns red. The “hook turn” in the central business district of Melbourne is, when making a right turn at an intersection, rather than going to the center of the street and creeping your way to the right as you wait for thru traffic to pass, you have to go as far to the left lane as possible (almost to the pedestrian lane)….and then once the light turns red you turn right. So it’s basically going to the far left lane in order to turn right. In the US the equivalent would be going to the far right lane in order to make a left turn. The point is to not block the traffic behind you and to let the tram cars pass. So once the light turns green, you go to the far left lane and are only allowed to turn right once your light goes red. It’s an odd little rule but it seems to work well to unblock traffic. And what makes it unique is that in all of Australia this rule only applies in the central business district of Melbourne.
A second, this time aggravating, thing about driving in Victoria is the toll system. There are three toll roads in the entire state of Victoria and unless you are an everyday driver with a toll account, payment is done through a glorified but punitive honesty policy. Instead of toll booths on the highway, when you get to a toll point a camera takes a photo of your license plate and you have two days to pay the toll either online or on the phone or else you get a $45 fine deducted from your card. In a previous blog entry I wrote about the honesty policy when riding the trams in Germany. You get on and are entrusted with paying the ticket with no authority to regulate. I feel that Australia’s toll system is a bastardized version of the honesty policy. “You get a two day free pass, then we hit you up for $45 if you don’t pay up.” I find it to be a huge inconvenience as an infrequent driver to have to sit and wait on the phone to pay my toll. But that is certainly where the state makes its money on tolls – from the absent minded tourist or driver from a different Australian state who is not accustomed to the state’s local toll system. A similar set up exists in Singapore for metro cards. You know that you put a deposit down on your Singapore metro card and get the money back when you exit the station? For the millions of tourists visiting Singapore each year who don’t know that, well, it’s pay day for the state. Very clever of you, Victorian Government. I’m on to you, you’re getting my phone time….but not my extra money…..
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