Apollo Bay, Victoria

I'm traveling along the Great Ocean Road which runs from Torquay to Warrnambool along the coast of Victoria.  After landing in Melbourne, I took a train to Geelong and from Geelong I took a bus to Apollo Bay via the Great Ocean Road.  I've been on many bus rides, but this ride takes the cake as being the most beautiful, most scenic ride I've ever taken.  In some places the road is level with the coast and you can hear the waves crashing against the shore from inside the bus.  Outside the blue-green water of the Southern Ocean gives way to frothy white foam as the water meets the land.  Other times the road climbs high above the coast, leaving you with amazing views of the coastline.
I'm staying at a very cozy little hostel about 3 blocks from the shore.  This hostel feels more like the hostels I stayed at while hiking the AT than like the hostels I've been staying at here in Australia.  My first day in Apollo Bay I did a little beach walk before heading up to Marriners Lookout, which offered a gorgeous view of the coast and Apollo Bay from a couple hundred meters up.  I had mentioned to the owner of the hostel that I was finding it very difficult to get to Adelaide without having to spend several extra nights in different towns.  The owner recommended that I book a tour that leaves Apollo Bay for Adelaide.  I looked into it and decided that doing that would be the fastest, cheapest, and best way to get to Adelaide.  The tour goes through the Grampians National Park, which excited me a lot because I had to scrapped my plans to visit the Grampians.  But now I get to spend some time in the Grampians, so that's going to be nice. 
Today I walked a stretch of the Great Ocean Walk, which is a 90 km coastal walk from Apollo Bay to the 12 Apostles, I rock formation along the coast.  I walked for 8 km along the coast to a picnic area in the Otway National Forest.  The walk was beautiful, alternating between sandy beaches and rocky beaches.  Along the rocky shorelines there were rock pools to inspect.  I learned an important lesson about walking along the rock pools:  take off your sunglasses.  The water in the rock pools was like a sheet of glass, transparent and smooth.  When you have sunglasses on you do not see the sun's glare on the water.  So I took a step onto what I thought was a dry rock, only to discover I was stepping into a shallow rock pool.  The water didn't go past my ankles and I had boots on so I was OK.  Yet another lesson learned while traveling.
Blackberries are in season right now.  I stopped and filled a liter bottle full of blackberries and probably ate about a pint of blackberries while I was picking.  I didn't have to go far from the beach to find the blackberries either.  The forest went right down to the beach.  There was no transition zone, just forest and then a sandy beach covered in sea shells.