The cliche in Australia is that Sydney is the best place to visit but Melbourne is the best place to live. It's supposed to have a more distinguished, european feel and be packed with good restaurants and coffee houses, both of which Sarah and I hoped to enjoy.

We hopped on a streetcar for the ride across town and got off near the Queen Victoria Market. We wanted to stop at the market to pick up fresh fruit and wine and cheese, all the makings of a gourmet picnic, but when we got there we were disappointed to see it was full of booths selling -- for lack of a better term -- white-trash clothes. We didn't feel a pressing need for pink halter-tops or tight white jeans with sequence, so we moved on.

We spent the rest of the day as we so often do, eating our way through town. Everywhere we went, everyone seemed to be Italian or be speaking Italian or be eating Italian food. It was a nice relaxing day, and I guess I would have to agree with the cliche about Sydney and Melbourne. However, I don't think it is as extreme as they say. Melbourne has a few more office buildings and Sydney has a few more historic neighborhoods than Melbourners might have you believe.

We headed southwest, out of town, for the short drive to our next stop, Torquay. Point Break, that early 90's cinematic dungheap starring Keanu Reaves and Patrick Swayze, forever immortalized Bells Beach at Torquay as the place where Swayze's Boddhi finally surfed his way to nirvana, and Torquay today continues to be one of the surfing capitals of Australia. Sarah and I aren't surfers, but after our 24 hours in Torquay we almost felt like we were. We saw a professional surfing competition, we shopped at the flagship store of a major surf clothing and gear manufacturer, we shopped at surf outlet stores, we watched wind-surfers and kite-surfers and sail-surfers, we watched surf videos in our youth hostel. In fact, we did pretty much everything but surf.

Torquay marks the start of the Great Ocean Road, and we got up early the next morning to start our way along it. The road was built in the 1930's. It follows the coast for about 300 kilometers west of Melbourne. Much of the drive is set between the steep wooden hills that reach the coast and the sheer cliffs that have been carved by the water. The road crossed through 3 or 4 National Parks that protect a varied mix of temperate rain forest, brushy headlands, and wind-blown beaches.

The distances were quite short and Sarah and I booked hostels only three hours drive apart, which left plenty of time for short hikes and scenic lookouts. Even though January is peak tourist time and many Australians head for this place on their road trips, we rarely saw people once we got out of our car and headed down the trails. At Otway National Park we hiked a four hour loop that took us along to top of some steep cliffs and then dropped down to a 7 kilometer beach. We were all alone. It wasn't swimming weather - the wind was blowing at 40 mph and there were huge pounding swells coming up from Antarctica -- but with the massive outcroppings and the sting of blowing sand on our legs the beach seemed even more exotic and remote than a tropical lagoon.

Sarah and I were still adjusting to staying in hostels. After Asia with its $10 private doubles and $2 gourmet meals, paying $20 each to sleep in a 10-person dorm room and cook our own meals wasn't feeling like a step in the right direction. Our hostels in Melbourne and Torquay had all the elegance of college dormitories, complete with blaring music, doped out roommates, and simmering pots of ramen noodles. Our first night on the Great Ocean Road, though, things began to look better.

Because we had booked ahead we were able to reserve double rooms. These are usually harder to come by because they are not that much more expensive and you don't have to put up with the comings and going over 10 roommates. It makes a big difference to be able to throw your clothes wherever you like and not have to listen to the four smelly Canadian guys snoring like lumberjacks in the other bunks.

Our hostel in Apollo Bay (about halfway along the Great Ocean Road) was a converted beach house. Sarah and I had our own room with old pine floors and a huge window that looked out over the surf crashing on the beach below. It was a great room, better than most of the hotels in town. We made a big Mexican dinner -- tacos, nachos, the works -- and actually enjoyed cooking our own food.

We got up this morning, cooked up a big breakfast, made our eggs just the way we liked them, and then headed along the coast for more hiking and siteseeing. This was the most famous section of the road, an area where the surf has eroded the cliffs into a series of towering stone monoliths with fanciful names: the 12 Apostles, The Grotto, London Bridge. This London Bridge had lived up to its name. A year ago a section of it collapsed, trapping two siteseers on the newly formed island.

Sarah and I enjoyed the drive. The scenery here was beautiful, and it was as good as we'd hoped it would be. At the same time, though, it confirmed the sentiment we'd recently developed that America really does have some of the most amazing scenery on the planet. Other countries may have more history, more culture, more exotic animals, but when it comes to the big natural sites that really slap you in the face with their beauty, we've got the market cornered. And we've got better supermarkets, too.

Part of our minds were preoccuppied as we drove on. Ahead lay the promise of something grand, something spectacular. Cheese.

You see, travelling in Asia had forced us to go without a lot of different foods, but there were only three things we really missed: fresh vegetables, Mexican foods, and cheese. We had addressed the first craving within hours of landing in Sydney, and the second we treated with an initial dose of tacos the night before (subsequent doses may be required), but as we drove along past the Great Apostles we were holding out for a gourmet cheese factory that our tourist brochure said lay right ahead.

At the end of the Great Ocean Road the steep hills soften into gently rolling dairy land. This is the heart of Australia's cheese industry, and right in the heart of cheese country, right there at a bright red star on my map by the side of the road, sits the Allansford Cheese Cellars. Any cheese would have satisfied us, garlic cheese wiz in a can sounded wonderful just then, but we wanted the best. Our brochure showed an old man holding a wedge of cheese out towards the camera, the cheese tucked between the man's rugged thumb and the blade of a wooden-handled knife. His clothes suggested those of a european peasant who had spent his life dedicated to nurturing the perfect cheese. I pictured an old cellar dug into the rich soil. Wooden racks holding giant wheels of cheese. Brine dripping down the walls and pooling on the floor.

We pulled up next to an oil tanker than was pumping milk into a huge stainless steel vat. Behind the vat was a large rectangular building of utilitarian design. At the back of the building, a small sign pointing to a small door. Cheese Cellar.

With much disappointment, we saw that the "Cheese Cellar" was nothing more than a small room with a poorly executed Bavarian motif and a single, run of the mill, grocery store cooler holding your average, run of the mill, selection of cheese. The "Tasting Room" was three paper plates of small crusty cubes of cheese, sweating vigorously under their misty veil of plastic wrap.

What made the stop worthwhile to me, though, was the the informational video that ran looping on a small television set in the corner of the room. From the start, it was obvious that the filmmakers either took their job way too seriously, or else they had a really great sense of humour.

The video began with the narrator saying in a slightly concerned voice, "With cheese playing an every increasing role in the world's diet, it is essential to understand more about the cheese production process." I didn't really catch the middle. Most of it was snazzy drum riffs and techno keyboards playing over footage of assembly lines full of gelatanous white stuff. The end, however, stuck with me. The narrator, now excited and trimphunt, says with a flare of trumpets, "Allansford Diary and Cheese Products Incorporated," [cue first trumpet], "The future has arrived!"

I watched the video twice.

The great thing about this trip is that every time we meet with any kind of mild disappointment, the pendulum swings right back the other way and throws us a delightful surprise. And after the disappointment of the Allansford Diary and Cheese debacle, today was no exception. We ended up in Port Fairy, one of the delightfulest, surpriest surprises we've had yet.

Port Fairy is a small fishing town just twenty minutes past the official end of the Great Ocean Road. It was settled by Irish immigrants about 150 years ago, and their influence is still evident in the beautiful old stone houses that line the tree-covered streets. The yards and gardens are immaculate, and a picture-perfect fishing fleet sits in a small port. Port Fairy is like all the good parts of Lake Wobegone, plopped down in Maine, and pickled in Guiness. It is the first town I've ever been in that strikes the perfect balance between feeling like a real town, where people actually live, a tourist destination, that you actually want to see. To top it off, our hostel has a BBQ (yes they really do call it a "barbie" here) and I got to grill big 'ol steaks for dinner.