ROAD TRIP!!!

*as i was driving alot of the time... and that there seemed to be not alot in Adelaide...
there's not many photos from this section*
.....actually... i went on Lucy's facebook and stole her photos instead! ;)

For our road trip we'd planned a stop off - half way to Adelaide in Port Campbell, 2 days in
Adelaide and then, as the car could be brought back one more day after, for the same price, another day somewhere on the way back.

Our first port of call was the Mornington Peninsula, to visit Sarah's cousin Mark. It is a very sought after area, as it is a long finger shaped piece of land below Melbourne, right on the ocean. After watching a bit of 'In the night garden', we decided to get a ferry over to the start of the great ocean road. - Very expensive, but it was worth the experience and also worth not having to drive back through Melbourne City.

When we eventually got to the great ocean road, we realised how long it really is and it took quite a few hours of driving to get to port campbell.








On the way, we had a bit of a scare. As we rounded a very tight corner,
a large black kangeroo was standing watching us go by at the side of the road. Why he was black, we don't know, but a sharp intake of breath was taken in by all.

By the time we got to Port Campbell, it was dark... which didnt really help this ghost town of a place!! it consisted of a hostel, 3 or 4 CLOSED restaurants, and 2 empty bars.



The hostel was very basic and our room-buddies all very quiet and grumpy looking.

In the morning we were very keen to get up early and keep moving (away). On the way
down the Great Ocean Road, we passed some great views, the 12 apostles and a rock formation called 'Blo-hole'.









After the GOR had ended, it was time to drive through big open spaces. The good old open road.









After a long drive and a few stop offs for food, we arrived at Adelaide. Our first impressions were good. the centre seemed a mixture of Sydney and Melbourne - only smaller. The atmosphere was pleasantly warm and the streets quite clean and safe looking. We wandere into the BLUE GALAH, a hostel we had booked online. We were greated by the most sarcastic man I've ever encountered. He seemed to be the owner and was just covering for staff who were off on an evening course. It seemed as though he had no clue of anything, but his tone suggested that it was OUR error. - I actually produced my laptop and showed him the confirmation email. - At which he made a big flap and agreed to cancel a maintenace visit and give us a room to ourselves. The only problem with the room was a broken curtain rail...which i fixed up in minutes!!!! ;)

The sarcastic man seemed to think that the car park would be a rip-off, but it turned out to e about £9.00 per day!! - slightly cheaper than £50.00 in brighton!

Walking around Adelaide at night, we realised that it wasn't as nice as we initially thought and more resembled a larger version of WOKING! - i.e. nothing really there. There was also not many people around, besides a few drunks and tramps asking for money!!! - although we did notice one tramp plugging his laptop into a building!! - obviously a back-packer down on his luck!!! hahahaa.

In the day time we had a drive around, not really finding anything. In the evening we decided we were craving a TGI Friday's style restaurant and found one 20 minutes away. We eventually found it in a HUGE shopping mall (westfield centre) - by far the biggest I've ever seen!!! Finally something interesting in Adelaide!! - unfortunately we had no time to do any day time shopping!! :(

On the way back to Melbourne we decided to stay at a YHA in Port Fairy; mostly due to the funny name but we'd enjoyed a rather humungous breakfast there the day before! - yes even scrambled egg!

It was another interesting hostel, looked exactly like what it was; a converted old people's home with converted barn and stable out the back. We were, unfortunately in the converted stable! - the gap in the door (which didn't lock) was about 2 inches (big enough for any creepies).



We chatted with our room mates for a bit, 3 other English people on a road trip! - Apparently during the night I was snoring rather loudly! and only woke when Sarah threw her pillow at me! The return to Melbourne was fairly unremarkable, except for a long, ridiculous argument with the clerk at the car rental place. Basically he'd told me 1.30 so we'd arrived back at about 1.20. According to the system and also the receipt, he'd put on 1.05. But I blatantly would've remember him saying that!! as it's a very random time! After a few "yes you did!", "no i didn't"s the guy begrudgingly agreed not to charge us an extra day, - won't be using them again!

In the next few days we basically sweltered in the biggest heatwave to hit Melbourne for around 70 years. None of the hostels were equipt for this kind of heat (45 degrees celcius) so getting to sleep at night was very difficult. The sheets seem to radiate their own heat! This was also not helped by a roomate who was from Liverpool and his snoring was the most ungodly, disgusting noise I have ever heard in my life! - something resembling a dying, gurgling hippo? Nothing would wake him up either - not even shouting, screaming, fart noises, whistling, banging, clapping, laughing and the best one - bed rocking. It was definitely a point in time where moving on seemed a good idea.

The two girls, Sarah and Lucy were keen to look into doing a bit of travelling and decided on a coach trip north, through Koober Pede (sp) - the underground town and through to Uluru (Ayers Rock). For various reasons, one that I had a gig coming up and wanted to get a job Sydney. I also didn't have much interest in being hotter and covered in flies and seeing a big rock in a desert; and paying an extortionate amount for the privaledge! The journey back to Sydney was the worst day I've had in Australia! - I'll write about that next time!

After the Blue mountains, we'd decided that we'd had enough of Sydney, so we had the unenviable task of finding new tenants for the apartment, before we could leave early. After showing round maybe 20 people and many near signings, we eventually found some 'mugs' to set us FREEEE.

As Sarah has a cousin living near Melbourne, it seemed an obvious choice to head there. We had a few problems booking the greyound to Melbourne and it turned out that me and Lucy had to get a different coach to Sarah.

It certainly was an experience! - A 12 hour coach which funnily enough stopped at the only places I would've wanted to see between Sydney and Melbourne. CANBERRA & HOLBROOK!
We stopped in Canberra for around 10 minutes, which was more than enough to realise that there is NOTHING there. It resembled a modern age ghost town, with all the shops and malls etc but no people. - barely ONE pedestrian and 2 cars. Weird for 9pm. Holbrook was equally disappointing. As nice as I thought it might be, it was nothing more than a petrol garage and a restaurant - it also had a funny smell and a collection of very back-water and slightly creepy staff! After the break of about 30 mins we continued onto Melbourne.

After a short and not so pleasant experience of dragging my seemingly heavier than usual suitcase to the hostel, I realised that one of the wheels had MELTED!?!? thank you very much Tescos!! grrr. By the time we got to the hostel, Lucy were very hot, tired and feeling quite disgusting; so we paid slightly more for a private room in which to pass out.

In the evening we met up with Sarah and her friend Chris who was staying in the same hostel.

We also went out for a lovely Italian meal, on the way to which we passed by the Civic Theatre which was showing *WICKED*!! - upon further investigation, we found out that the theatre had a 'WICKED LOTTERY', which was drawn 2 hours before each performance. If your name is drawnm you have the opportunity to get up to 2 front row tickets for $30 each!! (rather than $200) - we tried 5 times and on the 5th time, Sarah's name was drawn!

Funnily enough, as it was when I saw Wicked in London, we saw the understudy in the role of Elphaba (wicked witch). She was INCREDIBLE! and again the same as in London, upon research on youtube, found that we MUCH preferred her to the main actress. It was a great show (of course) and was weird hearing Australians acting with an american accent!!


During this week we rented a car and visited the Street where they film Neighbours. It was even smaller than we'd heard - seemed more like a toy street.



After this, we drove to the great ocean road. Somewhere along the way, the GPS got very confused and we found ourselves (me) driving through a national park, which was little more than a dirt track through the *bush*. - quite a scary experience. The GPS was blank alot of the journey! - it simply was aware of the road we were on!

After eventually finding our way to the coastline, we travelled about an hour up the great ocean road - stopping off briefly at a beach - unfortunately it was VERY cold so we needed to get back in the car; which had to be back to rental company, so we travelled back.

During our time in Melbourne, we went to the Melbourne Gaol, an old jail that famously housed and hanged Ned Kelly and his gang.




After looking around the spooky jail, we went through to the courtroom for a re-enactment of the court cases involving Kelly. Several of the audience were roped in to read the various parts and it was very informative.


After this, we went through to the slightly more modern jail, which was used up to 1994 and experienced how prisoners were treated. - This involved being shouted at and locked in a pitch black cell for 2 minutes. ***definitely puts you off of brakin the law! - well, more than the relative luxury of today's standards!!


After a week of exploring Melbourne,


we decided on a road trip, travelling the whole way along the great ocean road and to stay a few days in Adelaide. Tune in soon for this.