The southern coast is a remarkable region—isolated, remote, and lined with an endless coastline of lovely, lonely beaches. It’s a place where you cross paths with so few people that you make a point of stopping to speak with all those you pass. Having a conversation starter rig didn't hurt the cause either.
The Great Ocean Road begins to the southwest of Melbourne, just past Bells Beach. It draws a steady stream of tourists, but aside from the few sporadic beach towns stretching along the coast, it’s a wild and uninhabited landscape. Much of the area is national park land with designated campgrounds, where you can post up for the night in a rustic site with enough space for a tent and a communal faucet of unfiltered water—all you need.
The southern cape is a dense habitat with all the crazy wildlife you’ve heard about Australia. We drove the Cruiser down a long gravel road somewhere in Cape Otway that was overrun with short, fat, black kangaroos that I later learned were, in fact, wallabies and not kangaroos at all. There were dozens of koala bears (also fat) sleeping in forks of tree branches and tropical parrots singing from the canopy. Such a nature overload raises concern for venomous snakes and spiders though, so we slept above ground each night in the back of the rig.
