Standing on Bell's Beach, staring out over the crushing waves, I waited for the 50-year storm...


Of course, in my mind I had become the legend Patrick Swayze in the film Point Break (as if I had to explain!)

Sarah didn't quite understand my desire to hire a car and drive an hour south of Melbourne to Bell's Beach, so I pretended that it would just be a small pit stop on the way to drive the epic 'Great Ocean Road' round the south coast of Victoria.

When we got there she flatly refused to help me act out the scene, playing Keanu to my Swayze and homo-erotically wrestling with me in the crashing surf. Her loss.

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Having achieved the main objective of the day in visiting Bell's, I relaxed into the drive west along the coast.

It was pretty windy. The Great Ocean Road, running along the coast from Torquay to Warrnambool in South Victoria, was conceived as a make-work scheme for veterans after WW2. You would have thought they would have come up with something a little easier for those guys to do after their ordeal – for the most part the road is hewn out of the brutal cliff-faces that sheer straight down into a ripping sea.

Their hard work paid off though. The road is fantastic. Two lanes of driving nirvana – slick tarmac snaking round red-orange cliffs; turquoise waves below you and clean green headland ahead. It was a lot of fun, even in the pony Hyundai hire car Avis gave us.

The few towns we passed through on the road were petite, pretty and undeservedly empty. Anglesea, Lorne and Apollo Bay all boasted small but perfectly formed beaches in sheltered bays, nice restaurants and coffee shops. Aside from the die-hard surfers, Victorians apparently don't bother with the beaches in the winter, even if its 25 degrees and sunny.

The end of the road for us was the epic Twelve Apostles. Enormous sandstone stacks, sheepish and stranded off the coastline, victims of erosion. Apparently there are only 6 Apostles left, the other 6 having crumbled into the sea, but the survivors we saw were pretty impressive in the setting sun.

Driving back towards Melbourne and our 'unit' in Apollo Bay, we discovered the fantastic radio DJs Hamish and Andy. Very very funny duo, they spent half their show talking over Kylie Minogue who they were meant to be interviewing (which is the equivalent of interviewing the Queen over here), then spent an (unsponsored) hour talking about how mind-blowingly awesome the new Dyson Airblade hand-dryers are. 'Y'know how normally you just end up walking out of the loo wiping your hands on your jeans? Well it actually dries your hands! You walk out with your hands dry!'