Great ocean road

G' day guys! By Adam

We wanted to do the great ocean road in a camper van but at such short notice near Christmas they were either ridiculous prices or you had to hire them for a minimum of 7 days bla bla bla! So we opted for a car for 3 days and booked in hostels along the way! You can do the great ocean road trip in a day if you wanted but its hard going and we wanted to make a little road trip out of it. The plan was to do the great ocean road in a day and half with one overnight stop in Apollo bay and then return through the Grampian mountains back to Melbourne with a overnight stop in halls gap at the foot of the mountains.

We stocked up on food for the journey, tuna sandwiches for me and egg mayonnaise for Louise and on the night time we would have pasta in a tomato sauce with sprinkles of cheese slices haha for mid day snacks we would have a big bag of cheese onion ring crisps or yogurt! Yum yum!!

When we found our car rental shop, our luck had ran out and we got stuck with the new kid on the desk and it took him forever to sort out the paper work! We found the root of the problem was he was entering the expiry date of my driver's license as my date of birth so the computer was telling him my license had expired by 24 years.......numpty! haha all we wanted to do was get an early start because we had a long journey ahead of us!

Once we were sorted i got the safety talk from ....................louise before we set off haha "make sure you know where the lights are", "make sure you can do the gears cause you haven't drove for a while" lol after i passed the test we hit the road only to get lost in the city because we couldn't find the highway haha the first day we popped into a local information site and they gave us everything we needed to see and do along the way!

It was a great feeling being able to drive again because it gave us both that sense of freedom where we weren't tied down, we could go where we wanted! On the first day we headed to the famous bells beach where all the surfers were and it's in the movie point break! The great ocean road in itself was amazing it is basically a road that runs the whole length next to the ocean it's hardly ever out of sight!Next we headed to a golf course in a little beach town, where it's a good spot to see kangaroo's and since we've never seen them before, so we were both on the lookout,we sat in the club house and watched the golfers tee onto the 18th hole and grabbed ourselves two hot chocolates and were on kangaroo watch and it wasn't long before we seen them! They were quite hard to spot unless they were jumping about!But they were class they jump so effortlessly it's great just to see them springing about!

Next on the itinerary was a stop off at greys road to see some koalas or should i say Qualas! Haha long story but louise was asking me how to spell 'koala' one night and because i was tired from all the driving and i was sleepy and i just heard the word as it sounded so i was like its.......Q......U....A......L.....A...haha Louise soon burst into laughter and realised she was asking the wrong person!I've been called thick ever since! We saw loads of koalas....... again a first!!! Haha they look fluffy and soft but they do this horrible grunting sound! But the bonus of the day were the parrots, i don't know if it was because i looked like a scarecrow with my straw hat on but as soon as i put my arms out, it was like something off ace venturerhaha they just all came and landed on me and before long we were both covered in parrots!

Along the way we checked out lookout points, there's loads and we visited a light house and a few towns aswell! We got to Apollo bay backpackers and on first impressions it looked.............interesting lol nothing like we've stayed in before but it had that homely feel! The next morning we headed for the 12 apostles which was meant to be the pinnacle of the great ocean road trip. It was pretty impressive! At this point we had clocked up about 400km and the next stop was the Grampians which is a national park and mountain range!

I was feeling quite tired at this point and louise also wanted to have the experience of driving the great ocean road so we had a swap so i could rest, but i wasn't filled with confidence when she asked is this the accelerator? and is this the brake? as she was pressing her LEFT foot on it! Haha but after a few high revs she was fine and Louise drove us to the Grampians! The Grampians were brilliant we pulled up to this little cottage like hostel at about 6pm with kangaroos everywhere!! In the Grampians it was a little colder due to the higher altitude and this hostel had log fires and heaters and it was excellent we just sat in and warmed up that night and cooked our good old favourite pasta and cheese and had an early night before trekking in the morning.

We got up early to a swarm of locusts haha i knew our luck had run out....... they were everywhere it was like something out of a film but as we drove up the mountain they went away! We went to a few lookout points around the mountains and managed to fit in a waterfall before it was time to head back to Melbourne to drop the car off! As we drove out of the Grampians we must of killed a hundred or more locusts as they splattered on the windscreen but the drive back was quite quick because it was on the highway and at the end we clocked up a total of 950km!!!!! All in all we had an absolutely great time and that same night we headed straight to bus station to get a 14hr overnight bus ride to Sydney our hostel doesn't start untill the 23rd but mark and Nicola have agreed to let us stop for a couple of nights which is great! We can't wait for Sydney!!

Love adam and louise xx