Melbourne and The Great Ocean Road

We arrived in Melbourne on Thurday morning before Easter weekend without any accommodation booked as we planned to rent a car for two days and drive The Great Ocean Road. Only thing was we hadn´t reserved a car yet. Obviously given it was Easter Weekend everywhere we tried were booked out and had nothing left. You can imagine our frustration and annoyance at ourselves having not sorted anything out until the last minute and frantically running around Melbourne with our rucksacks trying to find a car. Only one place out of around 10 we tried had one car, a Toyota Camry that was bigger than we wanted and therefore a lot more expensive at nearly AUS$400. We couldn´t decide what to do, just spend the two days in Melbourne and miss out on it or spend the extra money. In the end we thought we are only here once so we might aswell just get it.

I think our positiveness payed off as when we enquired about student rates the woman replied ¨Hmm I´ll see what I can do...Ok you can have it for AUS$150´ I have no idea how we managed to get it for this cheap but we didn´t question it and speedily set off!!

Rob and ´Cameron´

We had to return the car by 5pm the next day so didn´t have long to see the sights. We started by stopping  at a supermarket  in Geelong to stock up on supplies.

Our route is in red

Our first stop other than quickly taking photographs, was at Bells Beach where we had lunch on the beach watching the final of the famous Rip Curl Pro Bells Beach surf competion which was won by Aussie Mick Fanning, yea we have no idea who he is either.

Great swell dude

We were only day´s from leaving Australia and we still had not seen a koala, almost by chance I read something about a great place to see koalas as we were passing it. It must have been a sign so we stopped and checked it out. It was just a small bay with a caravan park but when we pulled up there was a small group of people looking up into one of the trees...a koala!!!

There wasn´t just one but 4 or 5 in the trees that lined the caravan park.

Just chillin´

You looking at me??

They were all so cute and we spent ages just watching them. We were both happy to have finally seen some especially in the wild. As we continued our drive we were met with stunning view after stunning view...

Our final major stop of the day was at the Twelve Apostles just before Port Campbell. These are a collection of, nine not 12, limestone rock stacks just offshore. We arrived just before sunset and got to witness the sunset over them. There was also quite a lot of mist which made them a little less visible but also added to the scenery.

We then tried to find somewhere to stay for the night. As it was only one night we had decided on sleeping in the car but we weren´t too sure about where. We stopped in the next town for some food but there were ´No Camping´ signs everywhere so we went further along the coast and stopped down a track in a small carpark. Thankfully we had the big car and so we had quite a lot of room and a decent if not cold nights sleep.

We didn´t really know where we had stopped but then we woke up and were greated to this view...

Not a bad start to the day. We carried on to the next view point called London Bridge...

London Bridge

It doesn´t look like a bridge but up until only a few years ago the arch was connected to the land by a natural rock bridge. One day the bridge collapsed leaving a few toursists stranded on the arch. There were a few more stops along the ways including the Bay of Islands or Bay of Martyrs below. The scenery was so beautiful along all the coast that we were disappointed to turn inland for the rest of our journey.

We soon realised however that the inland had its own great landscapes to offer us. We travelled north all the way through the Grampians National Park, where we stopped by a lake for brunch and then headed back to Melbourne to drop off the car.

Back in Melbourne we were again lucky to have accommodation for free. This time at a really nice hostel courtesy of a friend of Rob´s mums friend. I think this trip has definitely made us realise how kind most people are, we have been given accommodation, treated to dinners, and helped by numerous friends and strangers.

So to our final two days in Melbourne and Australia. I think we ended on a high as Melbourne was one of our favourite cities so far. We were there over the weekend so visited Victoria market where we bought some food for a delicious meal we cooked up later at the hostel. We also treated ourself to some cakes.

Leanne´s Heaven

Back at school??

When we were there it was also the Comedy Festival which had a free show everytnight in Federation Square, we went to it one night and some of the acts were actually hilarious. We finished off the night with a drink in a bar that was on one of the columns underneath a bridge, it was cool.

There was a lot to explore in the city, we walked through graffitied alleyways and around the Australian Centre for the Moving Image which sound pretty dull but was really fun. They had a timeline of progress of video games and had ones you could play on. There were also interactive installions on TV, film and the media. We spent a good few hours there, mainly playing on the games.

On our last night in Australia we got our final dose of Australian culture by going to the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) to watch a game of Aussie Rules (Australian Rules Football).

The game was between Richmond ´Tigers´and Collingwood ¨Magpies´. We were supporting Collingwood, ´Go Pies´ thankfully our new Aussie rules team comfortably won!! It was a good game, thie first half was very close and the half ended in a huge brawl between the teams, the best thing that had happened so far. It must had an effect on Collingwood as they came out after half time and scored a few goals very quickly to put the game to bed. At first we didn´t really have a clue what was going on but by the end I think we understood about 90% of it. And when we didn´t really know what was happening we just cheered or shouted with everyone around us. As it is mixed seating we were probably cheered for both teams throughout the match.

The next day we flew to Fiji. At the time we weren´t really looking forward to it and actually tried to cancel our flights and accommodation bookings as a result of huge flooding across the islands and a possible cyclone threat. It would have cost us too much money to cancel everything however so we decided to just go.

Did we regret going and get caught up in the floods or did we have an amazing week on tropical islands, read the next blog to find out...