On May 10 we checked out of our hotel in Melbourne, loaded all our gear into the rental car, and set out westward to the town of Torquay where we began our drive along the Great Ocean Road. The G.O.R. runs along the south coast of Victoria, and was a big public-works project intended to ease the transition for veterans returning from World War I. (Because nothing helps you get over PTSD better than dangerous work involving blasting, I guess.)

It's a gorgeous drive — and the weather was perfect when we started out. After a morning driving with forested mountains on our right, and the vast blue ocean on our left, we stopped for lunch at the town of Apollo Bay. The local Fisherman's Co-op had amazing seafood platters — fried fish, calamari, grilled shrimp and scallops, coleslaw and chips. Hush puppies, alas, are unknown to the Australians.

From there we continued into Great Otway National Park, which covers most of the Otways mountain range (and a lot of the landscape we'd been driving through that morning). It's among the wettest places in southern Australia — more or less comparable to New England, though it doesn't get as cold in the winter.

We had booked a cottage on a farm in the Otways for two nights, and though I said it doesn't get as cold as New England, it was still chilly enough that we were very glad to have a wood stove in the cottage and a supply of gum tree wood.

On Sunday the 11th we walked around the farm in the morning looking at birds, then drove into the town of Lavers Hill for a lovely Mother's Day brunch at a restaurant called Perch: Australian sparkling wine, ricotta gnocchi with local mushrooms, slow-cooked lamb, and roasted carrots. For dessert Diane got a "deconstructed pavlova" while I had avocado ice cream in a chocolate shell (made to mimic an avocado skin), with a hazelnut center. Throughout the meal colorful parrots flew around outside.

With all that aboard we needed some exercise, so we drove a short distance to the trailhead for Melba Gully — an almost unbelievably beautiful walk through a rainforest valley, with huge cycads, trees covered with mosses and epiphytes, and a clear stream cascading through the middle of it all. We saw some birds and heard a lot more.

On our return to the cabin I spent a couple of hours sitting out on the porch enjoying the lovely weather and the profound silence. I could hear the surf pounding on the seashore a couple of miles away.

That evening we descended into a little fern gully on the farm to see if any glowworms were still visible despite the season. We saw one, maybe.

Our stay at the farm ended on Monday, May 12. We packed up and continued along the coast road toward Port Campbell. The stretch of the Great Ocean Road west of the Otways doesn't have the forested mountains on the right — the land is pretty flat and covered by farms.

But the seacoast is spectacular, with cliffs and sea stacks carved by the surf. We didn't stop at all of them, but we did see the formations called the "Twelve Apostles," "London Bridge" and the "Bay of Islands." All of them are amazing.

That afternoon we reached the seaside resort town of Warrnambool. Our first stop was the whale watching platform at Logan's Beach, but unfortunately we were still a bit early in the season for the whales, which have their calves on the Australian coast in winter, then head back to Antarctica for the summer months.

We checked into the Deep Blue Hotel and Spa, a seaside resort with a mineral hot spring. For $100 (Australian) we spent two hours in their spa garden, soaking ourselves in various pools and cascades of hot funny-smelling water. After cleaning up we dined that evening at a different seaside hotel next door, which was quite good.