Sunday, July 6: We left Coober Pedy headed toward the Northern Territory and Alice Springs, the town in the centre of Australia. The road was long, lonesome but surprisingly beautiful with all of the vast open spaces and strange, white pyramids of the Coober opal fields. We drove and drove and drove some more and made it to the border in time for lunch, a few pictures of the sign and then back on the road. Alice Springs was a welcome sight at about 5:00 pm whe...

Saturday, July 5: We ended up sleeping in a bit late and so didn't get out of Clare until about 11:00. We had a long drive ahead of us if we wanted to make it to Coober Pedy, the Opal capital of Australia and also the land of mystery where people just go missing for no apparent reason! We got to Port Augusta at about 1:00 and after a quick lunch were headed North to the Outback. There wasn't too much to see, just sand and scrubby bushes and lots of pavement. W...

On Saturday we headed in to Adelaide after Layla was done playing netball against BBH (they won too!). We got there early to do some shopping and hang out at Rundle Mall where Layla saw her first arrest by a police officer. We walked down to the Adelaide Oval at about 4:30 thinking we would have a very long, lonely time at the stadium, but upon reaching the river we saw the thousands of people already lining up to get their tickets and seats. We were lucky enou...

Sunday: We awoke around 7:30 and packed up the car quickly to get back onto the Great Ocean Road and see some of the sights along the way. Our first stop after leaving Apollo Bay was Maits Rest Rainforest Walk (from the previous night). We took the 0.8 km. trail around some very amazing trees and streams and headed on down the highway toward the 12 Apostles. We stopped the 12 Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge was were absolutely stunning! It was starting to get cold a...

Friday/Saturday: We got up just as Chance was leaving for school (loser) and headed to Macca's for a coffee and 'breakfast' before hitting the road out of Adelaide toward Victoria. Our first stop was at the border where we took Layla's picture and carried on. It was going to be a long drive to Melbourne! We arrived in Melbourne at around 7:00 p.m. The city lights were absolutely beautiful going over the bridge into the CBD. We got to the hotel and checked in...