I’ve already shared a bit about the alternative city of Melbourne – a  totally hip city that comes off as trendy without crossing the threshold into being too cool for its own good.  As much as I enjoyed the city proper, the natural terrain around this city is pretty spectacular and there are several quality and sustainable day tours from Melbourne.

“Go West” is a top choice for day tours of the region, the company offers two eco-certified day trips: one to Phillip Island and the other to the Great Ocean Road.  I paid just a bit more for the eco-certified trips ($10) but it’s worth the investment to ensure my eco-footprint is small – I’m going a lot of places on this RTW backpacking adventure as environmentally friendly as possible!

Phillip Island Day Trip from Melbourne: The Penguins

The Phillip Island daytrip meanders west of the city, Melbourne, and the day tour culminates in a parade of the itty-bitty penguins making a long trek from the ocean into the safety of nearby sand dunes for the night.

These tiny penguins are the smallest in the world and quite a sight! It’s important to do an eco-tour to see them because human influence and suburban sprawl has severely impacted their population numbers in Australia.  Conservation efforts in the last decade and a network of boardwalks and shuttles allows tourists to safely witness the Penguin Parade.

Each night all of the penguins take their last swim for the night and slip out of the ocean waters and make a perilous journey from the ocean to tiny sand dunes holes.  It takes the penguins well over an hour to make it the relatively short distance because they take frequent rest breaks – they are only calve high after all!

Photos of the parade are forbidden, so I don’t have any first hand pictures to share of the penguins themselves!

The Nobbies Rocks and Waters

On the way down to Phillip Island we took in the “Nobbies” – seals apparently  congregate here – not that I would know that.  The seals were hiding from us (or more likely in the sea fishing elsewhere) so the group took a half kilometer walk on the boardwalk around the point and watched the ocean break on the rocks.

Animal Sanctuary and Wombat Cuddling!

I was also really excited to stop at an animal sanctuary – place uses tourist dollars to rehabilitate some of Aussie’s native animals…plus I get to be up close and personal with some of the native animals I didn’t manage to encounter in the wild.   I got to hold a wombat!!

I don’t remember her name but she was terribly cute and cooperative while everyone in the group acted like Asian tourists and snapped dozens of pictures and.  I was surprised by how prickly the fur was…I was expecting it to be soft like a Kangaroo…but it’s not.  Anyhow, Miss Wombat was much more ladylike than some of the other animals – emus are not overly nice!

We were warned that they will snatch your entire food container from you if it’s within their reach – instead we fed them out of our hands.  They lunge over the fence toward your hand with their beaks thrust outward – then they pinch up the food bits without any regard for little pieces of skin that might also be attached to your hand!

I thoroughly enjoyed the Phillip Island trip and loved that the company took the extra steps to make sure that our eco-footprint was as limited as possible throughout the daytrip. A couple of days later I took the much longer trip down the Great Ocean Road (GOR).  This 800 kilometer journey takes in some of the most spectacular coastline I have seen in Australia… and I have seen a lot of it at this point!

Great Ocean Road Day Trip from Melbourne

The Great Ocean Road outside of Australia was inspired by the Pacific Coast Highway in California, USA and is every bit as stunning.

Fun fact, Hollywood stretched some facts in the filming of Point Break, which  allegedly takes place on one of the beaches along the Great Ocean Road. To cut costs though it was actually filmed it in Utah!

12 Apostles and London Bridge

Some of the other major sites along these beaches include the 12 Apostles and the London Bridge.  Only 7 of the 12 Apostles are still standing – because they stand as sentinels off the coast they are continually battered and knocked over by the strong ocean waves. Big storms have also contributed these magnificent towers crumbling and toppling into the ocean.

I feel really lucky that I am able to see this spectacular road now rather than in ten or twenty years down the line – much of beautiful scenery will be gone by that point.

The London Bridge is another of the postcard ready spots along the coast – the picture within the picture shows what the bridge used to look like  and what it looks like now, after one of the arches collapsed. Another interesting tidbit – the arch collapsed just days after BMW filmed a commercial on the London bridge and it’s generally accepted as fact that the weight of the cars was too much and caused the collapse…it’s kinda sad when you look at all of the little ways that humans have these profoundly negative effects on the environment and the natural order of things.

Loch Ard Gorge

Oh! how could I forget!  My favorite spot on the road is Loch Ard Gorge – this place was STUNNING!  The pictures cannot do it justice and I would have been content to just lounge around in the gorge for hours if I wasn’t on a tour!

The Great Ocean Road Day trip clocked in at 16 hours total, and while that’s a whole lotta sittin’ on a bus, I am sooo glad that I took the time to see all of that natural beauty that was just a day’s drive from the city bustle of Melbourne.