Day: October 30, 2025

I’m typing this in the Cally Hotel in Warrnambool which is at the top of the western end of the Great Ocean Road and as far as I intend to drive before beginning to head back south towards Melbourne. This is not where I intended to be staying. I’d originally booked in at the Turn-In motel which was a complete shambles and I didn’t even get past its reception.

It’s a weird place. There’s nobody actually in reception and when you announce your presence an Indian lady wearing a headset appears on a large TV screen and starts talking to you. Her accent is very hard to understand but the idea was that when you tell her your name she checks on a computer somewhere and is then supposed to print out your booking details on a printer over to one side.

However, the printer was jammed and when I pointed this out a large, uncouth male person popped his head out from behind the screen and came round to try to correct the problem saying the printer was not 100%. He was obviously as thick as mince and had no idea what to do and when I pointed out that actually the printer was 0% he took offence, accused me of being rude and arrogant and refused me admission to his motel. If I hadn’t already paid it would have been laughable.

He told the Indian lady to credit me but she said she couldn’t and I’d have to cancel my booking on Agoda and claim a refund, which I did in their car park where I also hastily booked this hotel. But I was a bit too hasty as it doesn’t meet my requirements at all, although now it’s too late. It’s a hotel, not a motel and although it’s clean and modern it doesn’t have the facilities I need.

I’ve just eaten a massive mixed grill in the restaurant when I’d brought food for this evening. The room has a nice bed and a fridge (what for?) but doesn’t even have a table and chair. It has a small hand basin in the corner but there’s no en-suite bathroom and the toilets and shower are at the other end of the corridor. Next time I’ll look much more closely at what I’m letting myself in for when booking my overnight stays.

The day itself was a great success. I left the appalling Colio Bay motel in Geelong this morning and headed for Lorne at the southern end of the Great Ocean Road. I then wanted to drive its whole length to Warrnambool but my Waze satnav wanted to keep taking me off it and onto the fast direct inland root without offering me any other option, so it was back to following signposts.

In fact I managed to do the whole drive exactly a I’d wanted to and took in every sight that I wanted to see, many of which were absolutely spectacular and I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. I’d planned to do the Great Ocean Road over two days but as today has more or less completed my bucket list of things I wanted to do during my stay here in Australia I’ve got just two more ’empty’ days to go.

This may be a good thing because I’m now pretty tired. I intend to have an easy drive tomorrow to what I think will be a lovely motel in Torquay at the other end of the Great Ocean Road but this time on the direct inland route, stopping for breaks along the way. Then I’ll have a last easy drive the following day back to Melbourne to return my hire car.

As I’m having to type this in the hotel bar in far from ideal conditions I’m going to put off my full Great Ocean Road post until I get to Torquay, but to finish off, here are a few photos to be going on with.