'This is the road to noooowhere!!'

Touching down in 'the land down under' we were super excited and were met by our surrogate family for the christmas period, the Robsons. (Ted, Nanette, Claire and Luke, old friends of Letty's). It was so nice to be in a proper house, even though Coops was on the broken camp bed on the floor, it was like a dream to have our own room and a bathroom where we could actually leave toiletries! When we first got to Melbs, we were surprised that it wasn't as hot as we had expected - typical, we've arrived just as Australia's 30 year drought had ended!

With only a few weeks before Christmas, we decided to make the most of it, by embarking on an exciting road trip along the Great Ocean Road! Oh yeh baby!!

Introducing: Our man of Melbourne, Alain Sparey!!! The cheese connoisseur that he is, loaded us up with a wonderful array of delicacies (including the delicious-ness that is...dolmades and pumpkin pesto!!) from his award-winning cheese stall at the Queen Vic markets. Everybody must go - its amezzing! He also gave us some tips for our endeavours ahead!

We headed off in our little blue hire car, first having to navigate our way out of Melbourne city centre, but quickly making it to the freeway! It was really exciting to be cruising along by ourselves, listening to various different radio stations as we went. At first there were quite a few little coastal towns that we stopped off at on the way. One of these was Torquay, where Coops first took over the wheel and kangaroo hopped her way out of the carpark and couldnt really see the road through fits of laughter, and the windscreen wipers going off everytime she tried to indicate!! Damn australian upside-down-ness! She claimed "I just have to get used to it! I just have to get used to it!"

There were delightful views as we reached some of the more rugged coastal spots, where it was perfect surfer stalking conditions. We pulled up and ate our yummy posh Alain treats with cameras in hand and lots of "oooh...ahhh...did you see that one?!?"

We had to stop by the famous Anglesea golf course - to check out the resident skippy kangaroos!! Seriously, they just chill out there while there are balls flying everywhere (hehehe!)

Our most exciting discovery, which we had not been prepared for....was to see the most famous lighthouse of our childhoods. You all know it guys....
"Have you ever, ever felt like this? How strange things happen...Are you going round the twist?!?!" Woop woop!

Lorne was a tres cute beachside town, where we induldged in a Cold Rock icecream (they mix it up on a marble slab for you!) and loitered weirdly by a wedding on the beach, because we thought it looked pretty and they had champagne!

And the thing that, as you all know, we get most excited about...was an animal discovery. We were cruising on the last leg of our journey of day one through some really windy roads, surrounded by gum trees on either side, when a man with a camera caught our eye. After some slightly dangerous swerving u-turns, we pulled up to be informed there were 3 koalas up in the trees! Even though, they only move a milimetre an hour, Bets has never moved so fast to get her big camera out and get the paedo lens on it!!! We were so excited and stood there for way longer than was really necessary, taking copious amounts of pictures - "oh that one's sleeping! oh that one just twitched! oh that one just scratched it's ear!" you get the jist. So just one week in and we'd already seen wild kangaroos and koalas - we knew this was going to be a good year!!

Our first night was spent in the very quiet town of Apollo Bay, where our cheap accommodation was a little worse than expected, when we pulled up into a make-shift garage and literally just had to walk through a door into our dorm room that was actually the old garage. Inside was exposed brick walls and a green glowing fire exit sign above Coops' bed (don't worry it was covered by a jumper!) and a token chinese man living there for good measure?!?!

Day two was a busy day filled with some well known spots along the 'Shipwreck' coast - 12 apostles, Loch Ard Gorge and London Bridge (an arc formed by the sea that when it collapsed left two people ((who were apparently having an affair)) deserted on the stack, only to be rescued by helicopter, haha!) We read this on our surprisingly long trek around the different sites of this bay, where Letty learnt her one fundamental lesson of Australia 'slip, slap, slop!' and Coops hasn't let her forget it!

This was our most sight-filled day as everytime we set off to our next designated stop, we would see one of the little brown tourist signs telling us there was "500m to a....waterfall/scenic lookout/beach or any kind of rock formation" and obviously we didn't hesitate to pull in at every opportunity!

Our second night's accommodation, in Port Fairy, was one that we hoped would be better than the previous due to it being a YHA. Turns out we were wrong. It was a bit like a prison cell, with children sized bunk beds attached to the (again exposed brick) wall and only a paper thin wall between us and the 'dorm' next to us! It's fun listening to Swedish music. We did venture out to the local pub, where we had a bevvie with the locals staring at us!

We started off the third day along the coast still, spotting a variety of different amazingly-coloured and loud birds (Laura's new favrit!) and then started heading inland towards the Grampian Mountains. The landscape was a really nice change from beach and farmland, to real rugged Australian scenery in just one day! Yet more animal adventures occured when we took a wrong turn down a very bumpy track, but as a result spotted a wallaby amongst the trees! (Queue squeals and scurrying for cameras!)

We were amazed at the grandeur of the landscape and the two Mountains that appeared out of nowhere (Mount Sturgeon and Mount Abrupt). There was one lookout in particular that literally took our breath away. I don't think we can properly explain to you what it actually felt like to be able to see so far.

It was also as we were leaving this lookout, that Laura still hadn't quite got used to the rental car, and whilst attempting to reverse up a slight incline, nearly killed a family of chinese tourists. They were alarmed, Coops was raged why the car was so retarded and Bets was just a little terrified!!! Whilst driving through the plains we saw what can only be sensibly described as 'a dinosaur' running in front of the car! Obviously, we later discovered, these are in fact emus! Even later Coops' dweeby research told us that they were in fact females due to the blue colouring on their heads. Also, lots of kangaroo spots as they grazed by the sides of the roads.

Our most disgusting discovery of driving a hire car into the Grampians was the swarms of locusts that we had to drive through (Bets took quite a lot of pleasure from speeding up into them!) However, the car bore the brunt of this, with an absolute shed-load of half dead, half squished locusts stuck to the front grill and windscreen!Windscreen wipers and wash does sweet fa! Clearly the newspaper warnings about what to do in a locust swarm situation, had not fully prepared us!

On route to our abode for the night, with many wrong turns due to us not really knowing where we were going and Bets saying "oh, let's try up here!" we drove through the quaint mountain town of Hall's Gap, where all the other tourists sensibly decided to spend their night. But no no no...not for us, we like to live it up, off the beaten track! So we found ourselves a lodge in Brimpean. Well...what an experience. Firstly, we pulled up to a working farm, with quad bike tracks (naturally they go together) and a completely deserted set of lodges. Coops was sent to find the farmer and accidentally stumbled across his 18 year old son's work out session in one of the barns.....sounds awkward...it was. He was shirtless....enough said! We finally got into our lodge, which, even though there was noone else staying there, he still put us in the one furthest away from the main building, which is a treat when it is dark and there is only Bets' head-torch for guidance! Not scary at all! Due to our roughing-it, we spent a good half an hour checking behind doors and in our beds for any creepy crawlies...luckily none to be found there! However, there was a whole array of spiders in the outdoor kitchen, which essentially was a couple of camp stoves in an army style mess. Gross! We were glad to survive the night there but were happy to have our free breakfast and head off onto our voyage to Adelaide!

After a pretty hot, and far longer than we had realised, drive, we arrived at Betty Robson's (no this isn't a cute b&b, but the Grandma of afore mentioned family!) We had a delightful stay with Betty, with home cooked food, Lemon and Lime Bitters and a room each. And of course her wonderful company and hilarious conversations - you've got to love a Betty!

After people telling us there was nothing to do in Adelaide, we actually enjoyed wandering around this nice city. There's lots of old school parliament buildings and we went to visit Ayer's House, where we learnt lots about Australia's history. The sun was shining, the shops were good and we visited another large market for lunchtime!

Betty offered to lend us her little car (we had ditched the rental by this point) so that we could explore a bit further afield and the South Australian hills. We had a lovely road trip around the Fleurieu Peninsula - lots more beautiful beaches and then a cheeky stop at the renowned vineyards!

Hahndorf was a crazy old German settlement, where we stopped for a look around the weirdy-beardy German shops and ate German cake. Yum yum! It was a delight. A quick look out over the city from Mount Lofty and then home to Betty for tea!

We finished off with an overnight bus trip back to Melbs where we experienced the incredible Greyhound, filled with bogan families readily dressed in their pyjamas at 5pm! Oh what a joy!

Christmas in Australia...here we come! (Ho ho ho!!!)

Thinking of you all, as always

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written by

coopsandbets on May 6, 2011 from Melbourne, Australia

from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!

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