The Great Ocean Road Part 1

March 4th/5th - The Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia

After struggling across town with our backpacks during rush hour, we successfully made it to pick up our campervan!! It was a Toyota Hiace, and although it was small, old and a little grubby it was to serve us very well.

We had a long day's drive ahead of us, as we were aiming to get to Port Fairy (the start of The Great Ocean Road) which was about 6 hours drive away. The wind coming off the ocean on that first day was very strong and you really felt it in the campervan so it was quite difficult to drive. We were also quite wary of the wildlife - we came across lots of signs warning to watch out for kangaroos and koalas, but we didn't see anything. We later learnt that kangaroos tend to come out at dawn and dusk. We sadly also saw the aftermath of several collisions - throughout our entire drive through Australia there was always plentiful road kill by the side of the road.

Mike did very well getting to grips with the van and we were soon well on our way!

The open road

Chauffeur Mike

We perhaps took the first day at too leisurely a pace. We stopped for some lunch and did some food shopping and were happy that we were going to just make it to the campsite before 6pm (which was when reception closed) when as were driving we noticed that all the clocks had changed and we had lost half an hour!! We made a panicked phone call to the campsite who were fine about it, but we were vigilant about time zones after that!

On arriving at the campsite we also discovered how fricking cold it was to be down south. We successfully cooked our first meal in the campervan, showered and went straight to bed! It was surprisingly cozy sleeping in the van!

The campervan

A cup of hot Milo before bed

The next day we started on The Great Ocean Road proper, and saw some stunning scenery. 

You basically just take your time driving along the road and stop at lots of lookouts. 

Realising just how chilly it was...

London Bridge

One of the lookouts was called 'London Bridge' - it used to be connected in the middle and so formed a bridge, and tourists used to be able to walk across it to the edge. A few years ago the middle section collapsed and fell into the sea, just after 2 tourists had made it across to the end. They were rescued several hours later by helicopter, but dodged the waiting press as they had been having an affair and didn't want to be found out!

Another stop was called Loch Ard Gorge and was the setting for a very tragic story. The Lock Ard was a ship that left England bound for Melbourne in 1878. After several months at sea they had had a party to celebrate sighting land, however, the next day heavy fog descended and despite the crews best efforts the ship ran aground on a reef and was destroyed. Of the 54 people on board only 2 survived. Tom Pearce was a young member of the crew and had made it to shore when he heard someone shouting. A young woman called Eva Carmichael was clinging onto some debris out at sea and he went back in and rescued her. They found a cave in the rocks and he left her there while he went to get help. Tom became a hero and was awarded a medal for bravery. The newspapers fuelled public speculation as to a romance between the two survivors, but it was not meant to be. Eva, having lost nearly her entire family, returned to Ireland a few months later, but Tom stayed in Australia and made a successful living being a carpenter (I think it was a carpenter anyway...)

The gorge itself was beautiful and quite eerie, and nearby there is a small cemetery on top of the cliff where victims of the shipwreck were buried.

Loch Ard Gorge

Loch Ard Gorge

Grave of Eva's family

Cemetery

Next up was the 12 Apostles - 12 rock formations jutting out along the coast: 

After lunch we headed on to Cape Otway National Park where we were to spend the night. We stayed in a very basic campsite without power and it was right behind the beach in a little bay and we were sleeping right in the middle of the forest. We had read in the guidebook that the national park was a good place to spot koalas and our constant surveying of the trees paid off when we spotted a few in the trees on the way to the campsite. We were really excited, but then it just got better. We went for a walk around the campsite and found one up in a tree next to our site! Then Mike found a mum and her joey in a tree and we spent ages watching them. I also got to try out the long lens on my camera and we got some fantastic photos. It was so exciting to see them in the wild, and sleeping right above our heads!! Koalas eat Eucalyptus leaves which are mostly made up of water and offer very little energy, hence why they sleep for around 20 hours per day, and the few hours they are awake they spend eating the Eucalyptus!
Around our campsite we also saw an Echidna and a wallaby.

WARNING: We have a LOT of cute koala photos...

Echidna

Wallaby

Radelaide

March 2nd/3rd/4th - Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

The night we got back from The Rock Tour, everyone from the trip met at a bar in town and had dinner and drinks. Everyone in the bar was really friendly and we met loads of new people. Needless to say it was quite a big night! We woke the next morning with considerable hangovers and the challenge of packing, getting to the airport and catching our flight to Adelaide.

We flew with Qantas and it was a really nice flight, although all we saw was red desert below us for 4 hours.

Arriving in Adelaide it was immediately different from the Northern Territory. It felt more like England, even down to the grey skies and much cooler temperatures. We got a taxi from the airport to our AirBnB place in a suburb of Adelaide called Prospect. We were staying with a lady in her 50s called Cynny and she was lovely. She also had a young French couple staying with her who were in Australia learning English, and a Scottish man called Eric who was in Adelaide busking at their Fringe Festival. She made us feel very welcome and cooked a lovely dinner for us all so we all sat round eating and chatting until quite late. It was really nice to talk to someone who had lived there for a long time and hear about Australia, and also to talk to others and hear their experiences and plans. Cynny was adamant that Adelaide was the best place to live in Australia and informed us that the locals refer to it as Radelaide because it's so cool!!

After a great night's sleep we walked into town via a travel clinic so Mike could get his last Rabies vaccine. The architecture was really pretty with lots of Victorian buildings, and the climate was much more tolerable - much less humid and cooler, but still bright and sunny; Cynny said that it had been known to snow occasionally in winter. There were loads of little cafes and places to eat and drink in the suburbs and lots of green spaces in the city centre. In one of the gardens near the river there was a literary festival going on and there were guest speakers and a book shop; unfortunately they were all Australian and we didn't know who any of them were!

We basically just spent all day wandering around the city. There was the main shopping street with malls and buskers outside, the university and hospital, the river and the surrounding parks, the Oval.
We spent some time in the Migration Museum which was really interesting - it told of how the immigration rules had changed over time, from the early settlers and their difficulties with the land and their treatment of Aborigines, to more modern times with 'Ten Pound Poms'. It was pretty honest with regards to the poor treatment of the Aborigines and also told of how during the 1950s/60s they gave unfair language tests to people wanting to migrate there - for example, they would ask a Chinese person to take an English test in Hungarian and they would then be denied entry because they would inevitably fail the test.

Downtown Adelaide

The University

The University

A Victorian arcade

For lunch we had a burrito and sat outside watching the world pass by! We then just wandered back by the river to where we were staying.

The Oval

The river

Where we stayed

Although there isn't much to do there, Adelaide is a beautiful, relaxed city and one that we could live in if we had to! It also showed us a bit of Australian life as we had imagined it before coming - the school kids going off with their wide-brimmed sun hats on, school sports out on the river, people leaving their houses unlocked and only closing the front gate of the house so that a breeze can constantly flow through. It felt like a bit of a sleepy city, and it seemed to have quite an elderly population, but it was chilled and felt very safe. 

If you have more time you can go and explore the vineyards and do wine tours - the lady we stayed with was very passionate about the quality of South Australian wine!

The next day we struggled across town on a bus, during rush hour, with all our worldly belongings on our back, to pick up our campervan. And so began our roadtrip...