Apollo Bay to Frankston - 17th Dec

We had a bit of a drive today to get to Frankston in the Mornington Peninsula so sadly we didn't have time to appreciate the deserted beach in Apollo Bay.

We stopped for breakfast in Wye River before driving on to Lorne, the premier holiday town on the Great Ocean Road. We stopped for a bit in Lorne and watched some trainee life guards but the weather wasn't great so we got back in the car and headed on.

We passed under the official sign for the start of the Ocean Road (for people travelling from Melbourne). Here there was a commemorative plaque telling us a bit more about the road. In summary it was built between 1919 and 1932 with the idea of constructing a scenic road of world repute. It was to be a memorial to the soldiers who died in World War 1 and an employment scheme for those that returned. The area is also known as 'ship wreck coast' with over 200 ship wrecks along the limestone coast line.

From this point on the weather turned a bit for the worse with intermittent rain. We made a brief visit to Airley's Inlet to look at the Split Point Lighthouse (made famous by the TV program "Round the Twist"). Then we headed to Point Addis to look at the waves crashing against the point. Again we didn't stay long because of the weather but also because of a crazily large number of flies which seemed very attracted to us both.

Next step was Torquay and Bells Beach were we got our first taste of Aussie surfers. Torquay is a big surf centre with Bells Beach playing host to the Rip Curl Pro every Easter. There were loads of surfers in the water and we spent quite a while just watching them catch the surf.

The dots in the water are all surfers

With the weather like it was today you could think we were in Torquay, UK not Oz. Whilst having a pancake and coffee the heavens opened and it tipped it down.

Instead of driving directly to Melbourne we'd decided to visit the Mornington Peninsula first. To get there we caught the 5pm ferry from Queenscliff to Sorrento. The crossing took 40 minutes. It was getting late so we decided to make haste to the B&B in Frankston. We drove through Sorrento and Mornington, which seemed really nice before arriving in Frankston.

We'd booked the B&B here as we knew we wanted to go to Philip Island the next day and Frankston seemed like a good location. We'd also found when booking online that lots of places in the Peninsula were fully booked however as had happened before when we got there we found loads of vacancy signs.

Anyway it could have been the poor weather, it could have been the long drive but when we arrived in Frankston we were decidedly unimpressed and when we found our B&B we were even more so. It was on a residential street in a rather insalubrious part of town. The landlord couldn't meet us till 8.30pm so we went to get some food but the only place we could find was McDonalds.

The B&B was a strange place. The whole house was rented out with some long-term tenants there. There was a well used grubby kitchen, a wood-panelled snooker room and a palm tree wall papered lounge. The landlady showed us our room and breakfast was a carton of long-life milk and a tupperware with some branflake type cereal in it which looked like it had been there some time. The plug for the fridge trailed along the floor and was plugged in by the sink and the shower had seen better days. This was officially the worst B&B of the trip to date and we were pleased to get through the night and move on.

The curtains were held together with clothes pegs

The wash basin/ fridge wire/ kettle area