Day 51: Wednesday 6th April. By AJ

Great Ocean Road Trip!

Today we headed into the City to pick up Roybot!! Yay!! (our spaceship campervan). The sun was shining and it was boiling hot so with the windows down and our music blaring we headed straight to the Great Ocean Road - it was so exciting to be driving in Australia! Although very strange driving an automatic, both of us kept reaching for a gear stick!
We stopped off at Split Point Lighthouse for lunch - the start of what has seemed a lifetime of jam and peanut butter sandwiches! The views were fantastic all around the lighthouse and we had a lovely walk down to the beach.
Back on the road, we had the usual photo session at the big 'Great Ocean Road' sign - the drive was awesome along the coast with the most beautiful views. Plus we could not have asked for better weather! Drove to Apollo Bay and decided to carry on into the Great Ottoway National Park to camp at Blanket Bay campsite. You were supposed to have a permit here but no-one who was there seemed to know about this ... so it was FREE! :) It was dark by the time we finally pulled up and set up camp so we cooked some pasta and chilled with a dvd in Roybot ... loving our campervan already!!

Day 52: Thursday 7th April.

Woke up to the sun rising this morning and realised we were camping about 10m away from the sandy beach! Beautiful view out of the boot! We were camping right on the Great Ocean Road path, so lots of hikers kept walking past - reminded me a lot of Duke of Edinburgh ... with very different scenery and weather! We drove further along the coast to stop for breaki. The national park scenery was beautiful with the sun shining through the trees. We stopped off at Cape Otoway Lighthouse, but decided against the visit, as it was pretty expensive! Instead we carried along the coast and had breaki at a look-out point, perfect!
Had some off-road experience driving to Moonhead Bay and walked along to Gables Look-out, which was very impressive over the ocean and surrounding bays.
That afternoon, we visited the 12 apostles - breathtaking! We had perfect blue sky and not too many other tourists, so got some fantastic photos. We had a picnic lunch at Loch Ard Gorge (a little further along) - where we had the little bay beach to ourselves! Walked to the thunder cave and then continued on the road through Port Campbell and onto our campsite at Peterborough. It had a few old-school shops and a lovely beach. The campsite also had a giant pillow (like a huge bouncy castle) - great fun!!

Day 53: Friday 8th April.

We had planned to get up for the sunrise at the 12 apostles this morning ... but decided against it when the alarm went off at 5.30am in the pitch black! When we eventually got on the road we stopped off at the viewing point 'London Bridge' then stopped off to walk around the Triplet Falls (national park). The forest scenery and waterfall was amazing and we had a lovely cool walk in the shade of the huge ferns and trees. We had lunch at a proper 'hillbilly cafe' - had aussi pies and muffins!

Back in Melbourne, we had an awesome pizza tea out with Aunty Bear, Uncle Nick, Caz and Carl - followed by puddings further downt he street! :)