'Wicked Vans' were the hire car company of choise. A late 1980s Toyota Van with a couple of cartoon characters painted down the side was the accomodation and trasport for the week to come. The nigfht before we picked up the van we planed our route. The main website we based our reseach on was http://www.sydneymelbournetouring.com.au/ which proved to be very helpful. From Melbourne we cruised down to Torquay on the coast, south-west of Melbourne. Torquay is the birthplace of surfing in Austalia and where the surf brands Quicksilver and Rip Curl originated. We parked up down a gravel road for the night. As it was Autumn knocking on the door of Winter, the night was rather crisped and chilly. In the morning i was excited to go and find Bells Beach. 5 miles from Torquay and one of the premier surf spots in the world. It turned out luck was not on my side. Sea fog had came in over night and you could not see the beach from the clift tops. Knocking that idea on the head we decided to start heading North of Melbourne to begin our planned itinerary for the oncoming week. The route was to head North of Melbourne via Bendigo and Echua where we would head east after Echua then back south along the 'Great Alpine Road', once hitting the coast again we would then head north parallel to the coast until we met Syndey. The furst day from Melbourne to Bendigo we strayed from the main highway to several little pretty towns. We spent the night in Bendigo whci was the main town for the gold rush in the mid-late 19th centurary. Due to the wealth in the area there are several great buildings from that era. From Bendigo we headed to Echua which is a port on the Murray River, once the largest inland port of Australia. It had a kinda wild west cowboy feel about the whole town. From here we headed to Wangarratta where we would begin to go south along the 'Great Alpine Ropad'. This area is what the Aussies like to call, their Alps!. A bit of imagination is needed if you want to relate the aussie alps to the french alps, but don't woprry you can still get ur skis out for a month in the winter. This area of Australia took Amelia and me by surprise as the landscape was nothing you would expect in Australia. Lush fields with rolling hills, open paddoxs with cows and sheep grazing and fresh lakes and river systems flwoing through the valleys. It is a very nice spot which we enjoyed for several days. We ended up doing a couple of walks and camping by an open fire and streams for a couple of nights. The only visitorws we had were friendly inquisitive possoms. After driving the Great Alpine Road we hit the coast. From here we had to push on through for a couple of days to cover just under a 1000 kilometres to Syndey. A different and memorable week in the country side of Australia.