Johanna Beach / Cumberland River / Torquay

As we have been doing for much of our trip, we left Johanna beach without a particular destination in mind that day. So we drove the winding roads of The Great Ocean Road with glorious sunshine, stopping for lunch in the pretty town of Apollo Bay. We then headed on to Cumberland River, a very pretty  and popular place where we managed to secure one of the last campsites for the night. Turning up at one of the most popular caravan parks on this stretch of coast on a weekend without a reservation is risking it, but there was still room, so we were in luck. There was lovely scenery here, with dramatic cliffs rising from the river and yet another beautiful sandy beach where we watched surfers and fishermen do their thing.
We were just getting to cook dinner when seemingly out of nowhere we were overwhelmed by hundreds, nay thousands of flying ants! Many of which soon expired in the flame of our gas stove and we had to seek refuge and eat in the car! Annoyingly the plague soon stopped and had we waited a little longer, we probably would have missed it. Ah well, such is life.
The next day we did a bush walk in the morning to see a local waterfall, (the name of which escapes me) before carrying on the road to Torquay via Anglesea for lunch. Both lovely towns, Torquay was our stop for the night as we had an all important and essential Aussie experience of a surfing lesson booked the following day. Torquay is also where surfing in Australia really got started.
Our campsite was just over the dunes from the ocean and even better, a great little cafe a mere two minutes away, overlooking the beach. So as it was up and at 'em at a reasonably early hour to be on time for our lesson and we decided to fuel up with incredible bacon sandwiches from the Third Wave Cafe - highly recommended! The sunshine may have gone but the rain held off for the duration of our two hour surfing lesson. It was great fun in spite of the inevitable intake of seawater and wipeouts, we both managed to catch a wave by the end.
xAnnie & Tom