Woke up today incredibly excited - today is the day for the beginning of my roadtrip. I met up with Angelina outside her hostel at 9am then we jumped in a taxi to the van deopt. We filled int he paperwork only to find out that Angelina was too young to do the driving which was a bit disapointing but not a biggy. We were then given a dvd about how to use our van - the van was not as expected - it was a small bus - it had a shower, toilet, microwave, cooker, table, bed and lights! it was even large enough to have a beeper when i reversed! Basically the van was rather luxurious! At first it was really daunting to drive but i quickly got used to it. The van wasnt ready for us until 11.30. We headed to Woolworths and stocked up on supplies and then we were off - the van came without maps so we took a while trying to find our way out of Adelaide but after that it was plain sailing. Our first stop was a small town called Meningie were we sat outside and had lunch. We went for a quick walk along the beach before jumping back into the van and on the road. We drove through the Corong National Park - bushland as far as the eye could see. Once out of the Corong National Park we were officially on the great Ocean Road - the first town we drove through was Kingston which on entering has a massive statue of a lobster - we took a few pics and then drove through the town but not really much there. Robe was the next town which was really cute - its really small but during the summer months becomes very popular with tourists as a holiday destination. Our last stop of the day was Mount Gambier - a town built on the side of a mountain of which at the top is a 204metre deep lake that glows a saphire blue colour - no-one knows why but that doesnt matter cos the lake is really beautiful. We drove aroudn trying to find somewhere to park but you arent allowed to park up anywhere in Mount Gambier so we found ourselves a campsite. Just as we were pulling into the campsite Angelina bumped into some friends whom she worked with in Brisbane - we ended up on the pitch next to them. After cooking tea we all went on a 3km walk to some caves in search of possums - we found plenty of them - they were really cute but really they just wanted the food we had brought for them. We all headed back to the campsite and and set up our vans for the night.

3rd Feb - Woke upa t 8am as we knew we had a long day ahead of us. We had brekkie and then set off. We drove through Nelson and the national park to Portland - here we visited Cape Bridgewater which is an area that used to be a forest and also has some awesome blowholes, sadly the sea wasnt very rough s we didnt really see the blowholes in action. We had a fair distance to cover today so we didnt stop off in many towns - just the scenic spots along the way. We drove through Port Fairy, Warnambool and Port Campbell (where we stopped off for an ice cream). The actual coastline of the Great Ocean Road was breathtakingly beautiful - we stopped to view rock formations called London Bridge, the 12 Apostles etc. After driving along the actual coastline we drove through Great Otaway NP - along this stretch we were flagged down by 4 people looking for a lift as their car had broken down. Our van had stickers all over it saying it was only licensed to carry 2 persons so we were a bit sceptical but could hardly leave the people stranded so we made some room and they jumped in the back. They were very grateful for the life and as luck would have it they were staying in the same town we were tonight...Lorne. We dropped them off at their house and the insisted on giving us $50 t say thanks! We parked up outside the YHA (Angelina stayed there last time, knew people there and meant we could use their facilities!).

4th Feb - After leaving Lorne we drove through Anglesea and headed towards Torquay. Torquay was beautiful - we stopped off and checked out some of the surf shops. We then got back in the van and drove throught Geelong before heading back to Melbourne. We were very suprised we managed to get to the drop off depot as the photocopy of the maop they gave us of Melbourne was of very poor quality. On returning the van everything was ok and it turned out we had driven 1215kms! Angelina and i swapped photos and then headed to the train station to get back into the city. We were getting off at different stops so we said our goodbyes. I stayed at the same hostel as last time so just had a chilled out evening.