Toronto to Melbourne: Day 9 - Great Alpine Road & Lakes Entrance

(Note: Day 8 was a travel day - there is nothing interesting about highways.)

Don’t ask me what I was expecting on the Great Alpine Road. Guardrails maybe? Sigh.

We left Myrtleford and set out to see how curvy a few roads were before we hit the Great Alpine Road, going through Tawonga and then across the Tawonga Gap. We stopped at the summit of the Gap for a coffee and had a long conversation with a man who lived close by, and rode this road whenever he could. We took some photos across the valley below:

Yes, I did walk to the end of the look out. I felt so brave!

But not for long. The rest of the ride heading south up to Mount Hotham was a challenge to my vertigo and agoraphobia. The scenery was stunning, but there were few places to pull over and take photos as the road was narrow and very twisty as it climbed in elevation.

I did my best, but when we were about 2-3 kms from the summit, I made Keith pull over. We were above the tree line, so I could clearly see the road carved out along the saddle of the ridge and around the next peak, and it was enough to bring on a panic attack.

This is not my photo. I was too busy freaking out.
Photo by SplaTT

The panic attack wasn’t pretty, but when are they? I couldn’t form words…all I could do was whimper and point to the ridge. I think it was a lot like Beaker from the Muppets. Keith gave me space until common sense backed the panic back into the corner; we couldn’t go back, so we had to go forward. I got back on the bike behind Keith and looked where-ever the drop wasn’t while singing Monty Python’s Always Look On The Bright Side of Life inside my helmet.

It was about 15 minutes before we got to the ski resort at the top of Mount Hotham, but it felt like much longer. We stopped to take some pictures and so I could catch my breath.

Trust me, this is high up.

The ride down was perfect; obviously that’s the road that people use to get to the ski hill in winter. Lots of gentler curves without the steep and sudden drop-offs of the other side.

We stopped in a former gold rush town called Omeo for lunch and had a hamburger from a snack counter. Here’s something to remember if you ever come to Australia – they like to put beetroot on a hamburger for some odd reason. It’s easy to pick out, but the juice gets everywhere. It’s kind of nasty/odd to my North American tastes. Even the dog that so patiently waited by the picnic table for our scraps wouldn’t touch it.
From Omeo we headed to Lakes Entrance on the coast. A pretty typical ocean holiday town, it has a long strip of motels, mini-golf and pizza places. It was around dinner, so after a walk on the near-deserted Ninety Mile Beach we headed to a restaurant called Miriam’s for some seafood and a well-deserved cocktail for me.