Today we drove the last section of the Great Ocean Road and I have to say that the Bay of Islands, just past Peterborough, was spectacular.  We actually thought it was more picturesque than the famous Twelve Apostles – more limestone pillars and outcrops, more dramatic shorelines, wonderful colours.  I have only one poor picture of it, as it was incredibly windy while we were there and I was seriously worried my iPhone would blow out of my hand.  I’m waiting for Peter to process his shots which will hopefully include at least one in-focus panorama!

After that, we got onto the Princes Highway which travelled through the interior to Mount Gambier, our destination for the night.  It was pretty mundane territory but thankfully we had the Mercedes sound system to keep us entertained – it is downright awesome!

We had a lot of difficulty getting GPS to find our hotel – neither the Mercedes NAV system nor our Garmin would identify it so we were a little concerned until my iPhone GPS came through (very fortunate it didn’t blow out of my hands a little earlier!)  Then, as we approached the town/city of Mount Gambier and what we thought would be our hotel location, the GPS took us off the main roads into pure farmland – fields, cows, fences, totally rural.  We knew that our hotel was called The Barn Accommodation but we were still getting a little concerned about where we were heading. Finally, some big “The Barn” signs came into sight…and wow.  What a surprise.  In the middle of nowhere, here is this wonderful sprawling boutique resort with gardens to die for and modern urban furnishings and a well-known local Steakhouse!  It was a great surprise at the end of the day.  Kudos to tripadvisor which found it for us!

  A poor representation of my favourite view along the Great Ocean Drive.