Melbourne & The Great Ocean Road

Melbourne is a fantastic city, and like Sydney, it is rated amongst the top cities in the world to live. Melbourne feels like a large Ottawa, in the summer!! The Yarra river weaves through the city offering great river side bike trails and parks. The city is famous for its laneways and arcades - narrow cobble stone pedestrian streets lined with cafés and restaurants....and every tourist in town. Being further south in the state of Victoria, Melbourne's weather can be more extreme than Sydney's. We just missed a few days of 40+ degrees and luckily enjoyed some cool evenings watching tennis.
From Melbourne we drove the Great Ocean Road. This is a famous stretch of highway that hugs the coast west of the city. The ocean is rough here with powerful waves and wind shaping the cliffs. The most picturesque section of the coast is called the twelve apostles - a group of rock pillars still standing as the waves erode their base. Along the way we saw our first koalas in the wild and a section of rainforest with 200+ foot trees.