Muscle Beach

Our first night on the Great Ocean Road was spent in a small town called Beachport. We stayed at Bompa's, a restaurant with some rooms upstairs and a ping pong table next to the bar. We convinced them to open up the room and turn on some music so we could resume our never-ending game. While we were playing, we met some Melbournians who offered to take us on a 4x4 tour the next day of the out-of-the-way coastline that we would not have access to otherwise. Turns out, people flock to Beachport to show off their 4-wheel drives and tackle sand dunes (seemingly at a 90 degree angle) in front of their friends. We spent the entire day bouncing around in a Ford Courier truck, while three of the guys scaled dunes on their dirtbikes. We each had a chance to drive the truck over the dunes, and Kim still feels bad for hitting one of the guys. (He's fine...but the Courier suffered some superficial scrapes). Sorry, Todd. We got to see some amazing beaches and watch guys rev their engines and pull each other's trucks out of the sand. We didn't have our cameras, but this is exactly what it looked like...don't see much of this in NYC. It was an eye-opening (and very fun) look into an Australian "subculture."