Apollo Bay

Here I am standing on a beach along the Great Ocean Road en route from Melbourne to Apollo Bay.  I flew into Melbourne and stayed with the two couchsurfers (Joel and Nathalya) who had stayed at my place in Phnom Penh.  I was only in Melbourne for a few days before we packed up their house and made our way down to Apollo Bay via another couchsurfer who offered to drive us there out of the kindness of his heart and for some fish and chips upon arrival.

This is about 30 minutes outside of Apollo Bay in the town of Lourne where we decided to stop off at a bottle shop (liquor store) and indulge in celebratory drinks for the remainder of the drive (legal in Australia to have open alcohol containers in a vehicle as long as the driver isn't drinking).

After a lunch of fish and chips we made our way to our new home and began to settle in, a sense of excitement bubbling in all of us.  Afterwards we took a walk into town (which is a total of about four blocks along the Great Ocean Road) and stopped into a supermarket.  Here is some of the local cuisine that Australia has to offer...

The town is very small and lovely, right along the ocean just two hours southwest from Melbourne.  Every person I've met here has been very warm and welcoming and seem to want to go out of their way to help you.  The population here is around 1,500 but during the tourist season jumps up to 9,000-10,000 due to school holidays and vacation time.  Right now we're in the middle of a rainy winter but come the end of November it will start to warm up, making the ocean much more appealing to dive into.

Over the following week I took many walks in and around the town.  Essentially, working back from the ocean there is the water, the Great Ocean Road, the town, farms, and then forest (referred to as "the bush").  Here are some pictures of my aimless wandering...

Eucalyptus trees, the best place to spot Koalas.

I feel very at home here in Apollo Bay.  There is something inexplicably beautiful about living next to the ocean and being surrounded by so much nature, it is very calming.  Going to sleep and waking up to the sound of waves crashing is a sensation I will never tire of.  Here are some pictures taken from the from my front porch at sunset...

And just like that I find myself in yet another perfect situation.  I had some feelings of uncertainty leaving Phnom Penh, being that there were quite a few options before me, but I moved forward and followed my intuition and couldn't imagine myself anywhere else.