你们对澳洲有怎样的印象？美景美食、热情善良的澳洲人民，还是像歌剧院、热带雨林这些被大家熟知的旅游胜地？在数学老师Julian Taylor眼里，澳洲是"危险"的，鲨鱼、蟒蛇、崎岖海岸线……就连去世人称赞的维多利亚大洋路也是需要付出一定"代价"的。去年三月，Julian Taylor老师就去到了大洋路，美不胜收的自然奇观给他留下了深刻的印象。

　　As the senior 2 and 3 students will know I came to this beautiful and fascinating country and to this historical school last March. I am also sure that it took most of these students at least two weeks to work out what I was saying because of the nasal quality of my Aussie accent. Nevertheless we battled on together and I did my best to entertain my new Chinese friends by relating horror stories of all the creatures that can kill you in Australia. We do seem to have more than our fair share and bizarrely it has become a source of national pride that Oz (Australia) is such a dangerous place to live. Regular visitors to our swimming beaches such as sharks and box jelly fish we nonchalantly accept and we share them with California and South Africa (the sharks that is), crocodiles we have in common with most of Africa (and others) but we do seem to almost have a world monopoly on poisonous snakes. I even have a King Brown snake that calls my backyard in Murray Bridge home and on occasions, as it suns itself, watches me enjoy my morning coffee as I question the bare foot option I usually choose when walking in my garden.  At least it is tolerant enough not to have bitten me - yet!

　　However, apart from creatures that kill you Australia has some lovely coastline (that can also kill you) and a personal favourite of mine is the road Aussies modestly call the Great Ocean Road. It is an Australian National Heritage listed 243 kilometre stretch of road along the south-eastern coast of Australia between the Victorian (Victoria is a state - much like a province in China) cities of Torquay and Allansford (near Warrnambool - quite a large city by Oz standards at 35,000 people).

　　It was built by returning diggers (soldiers). Progress through the dense wilderness was a slow 3 kilometres a month with construction done by hand; using explosives, pick and shovel, wheel barrows, and some small machinery.  The job was perilous and several workers were killed on the job. Started in 1919 the road was completed in 1932. However, typically for Aussies when the steamboat, Casino, hit a reef near Cape Patton the Captain had to jettison 500 barrels of beer and 120 cases of spirits. The workers obtained the cargo, resulting in an unscheduled two-week-long drinking "smoko" (break)!

　　The Great Ocean Road is dedicated to soldiers killed during World War I and is, in fact, the road is the world's largest war memorial. The road is regularly rated in the top ten of the world's most scenic drives.

　　The road travels via Anglesea (southwest of Geelong) where it meanders along the coast. With tall, almost-vertical cliffs on one side motorists are continuously warned of possible rockfalls. Here it hugs the coastline affectionately known as the Surf Coast (Bells Beach [and Jan Juc] are located here - the site for a famous annual pro-surfing event).

　　The Shipwreck Coast then follows as one travels further west away from Cape Otway (when you see this section it is easy to see why it was given this name - a good car game is counting the number of shipwrecks one can see).  This section provides visibility of Bass Strait (this is the stretch of water separating the state (province) of Tasmania from the mainland) and the Southern Ocean. Here the road travels through Lorne (the place to be for a New Year's Day party) and Apollo Bay.

　　The road winds along, just on the edge of the ocean, traversing rainforests, as well as beaches and heavily eroded limestone and sandstone cliffs. Brilliant surf beaches, washed by waves generated from winds that have travelled over 3000 kilometres from the South Pole are inter-dispersed by jugged rock formations. In short the views can be so spectacular that people have driven off the edge of the road while admiring nature's beauty. The road eventually leads to the Twelve Apostles  (although there are only nine of them - most Aussies are not that good a mathematics!) in the Port Campbell National Park. The Apostles are limestone stack formations standing out from the coast - tantalizingly close enough for foolhardy souls to contemplate a swim out to them but far enough away so that a more sensible approach to the pounding surf is quickly adopted. [A quick note to those wishing to travel here and not told to you by the tourist companies - you can get down to the beach and to do so off the Road at Gibson Steps. This will allow you to scale a set of steps precariously attached to one of the cliff faces and then take photographs from the base of one of the apostles but watch the tide and waves.]

　　After the Apostles one reaches Port Campbell. The site notable for its natural limestone and sandstone rock formations including Loch Ard Gorge (the Loch Ard was shipwrecked here), The Grotto, London Arch and the Bay of Islands (a sort of bay of numerous mini anorexic twelve apostles).

　　From here one travels to Warrnambool for the annual whale watching and then north through sheep farming country to the Grampians National Park and all its kangaroos, emus and koalas - but that is another story.