So Tuesday was the day we set off on our road trip to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road with Vanessa and Helena. We met at lunch then did a food shop at Woolworths which came to a grand total of $60. Then a bit of petrol also cost us $20 each! By about 3pm we were all ready to set off. Vanessa was the first to drive us so off we went in a Nissan punto, a 2 man tent, 2 chairs, a box of food...and ourselves! I clocked the mileage as 136456 the roads are so easy to drive on! They are all dead straight highways, hardly any cars about, and its flat so you can see for miles ahead. Around is just dry dessert. The roads are well signed so its also easy to navigate, thankgoodness! On our first day we didn't stop anywhere to see anything, we just tried to get some miles done and ended up stopping in a deserted camp site where there was just one other couple in a caravan! We were right by a lake, it was very picturesque :) our tent is almost like a pop-up it takes 3 mins to set up so after that we cooked some of our tinned ravioli on our mini hob.

We went to bed after dinner at about 8/9pm, but I did not sleep for a while. It took me quite some time to get comfortable. The three of us were in a "two-man tent" which is actually probably just room for one-man...and on top of that we were literally sleeping on the ground! All we had for a bit of support, which may have just kept us warm a little, were 3 thin mats to sleep on, each ½ a cm thick. I woke up every 10 minutes to change position because something was hurting, or numb or aching, but I couldn't even lift my knees up because the tent wasn't' wide enough for us three. I must admit, the next day was a better sleep, I probably slept about 30 minutes before waking up to move position. It was definitely an interesting sleep.

The next morning we were up at 8am, packed by half 8, breakfast and washed the dishes by 9am and we were on the road to the Grampians. By 11am we reached some Caves that were on the map for tourists to see so we stopped off to have a look. Bad decision, it cost $8 each to see a rubbish cave, but we managed to get a free hot choc each from a voucher that said one free hot drink (gullable aussies! Haha) so we didn't feel too raped of our money after that. We had made it to the Grampians by 3pm and were so hungry we got our bread, bananas and chocolate spread out and munched away in silence, as if we hadn't been fed in days. We went to the information centre where we picked up our 15th map J (yes, the information centres LOVE to give you maps, but they are free so we weren't complaining and the centres themselves were very posh, modern and clean!) Our first hike in the Grampians was "The Pinnacle." It was a great walk, about an hour each way up the rocks to see a great view of the landscape! Well worth the trek. It tried to rain on us but there were a few drops of rain here and there but that's all. Of course when we reached the top we spent half and hour taking LOTS of photos J and resting before the hike back down. We timed the entire walk perfectly because it started to rain heavily when we got back in the car, the clouds came over and we couldn't see a thing so decided to find camp and do a few other walks the following morning. The drive should have taken about 45 minutes but because of the clouds and the fact it was about 6-7pm, the Kangaroos all came out and started jumping in front of us!! I was moaning all that day that I hadn't seen any wildlife and all of a sudden the fields and roads were littered with Kangaroos! It was an incredible sight. They are so stupid though, they literally stand in the middle of the road and stare at you as you are driving towards them. They don't move...you just have to stop and wait for them to hop away in their own time. Lol. It was a crazy sight to see the fields full of kangaroos hopping around and eating the grass. I think it's too hot for them to come out during the day so they must hideaway in the shade until it gets cooler at night. So the excitement of seeing Kangaroos soon died away when they just became pain in the butts and didn't let us drive fast than 20mph (although obviously it's in kilometres here!) We made it to some random campsite in the middle of nowhere at about 8pm, to find that we had to pay $7.50 each. I couldn't believe it...we had specifically driven out of the Grampians to avoid camping costs, so we told the lady and she let us pay $5 each instead. We still were not too happy. We set up camp and cooked pasta and sauce in the dark. The next morning we jumped in the showers, which were disgusting AnD you had to pay 10c per 1 minute of hot water! Somehow I managed to shower in 1 minute, maybe because they were that horrible I didn't want to spend any longer than I had to in there. It was really cold that day, we were in trousers and I had about 4 layers on top too, but it wasn't raining to we weren't complaining.

In the morning, we walked to a couple of other lookouts, McKenzie waterfalls, the balcony and another one close by. The walks were fun and the views were incredible. We headed back down south to Hamilton where we ended up spending the afternoon in McDonalds trying to find somewhere to stay via couchsurfing as the lady at the previous campsite scared us saying that there wouldn't be any space in the camp sites because it's now Easter holidays. Ops, that was something we didn't think about! So we started sending lots of messages on couchsurfind, hoping that someone would reply and let us stay the night. Luckily I got a phone call from a 27 year old Aussie guy would said he had space for us that night. So we first went to see Port Ferry, which was a very small but pretty village or town, and then went to his house in Warrnambool. He was a lovely genuine 27 year old guy, living with a 30ish year old house mate, who was also lovely. I think they just liked company and they had also travelled a fair bit so knew what travelling was all about. We had some beers and chatted all night with them and they told us where we should stop off along the Great Ocean Road. It was great! And so was the sleep J Amazing sleep! I didn't wake up once and I was so comfortable. It was heaven. As was the warm, clean shower and nice big thick towel he gave us. Oh good times J The things you take for granted!

In the morning, we enjoyed toasting our bread (yum!) and then set off for day 3 of the road trip. This was the start of the Great Ocean Road, we made several stops along the coast, took pictures of the beautiful ocean, rocks and islands, the 12 appostles, stopped for some good old fish and chips (oh yes, it was tasty, even if it was $9) and made it to Johanna Beach, which was a free camp site right by the beach. It was a lovely campsite, the sun was shining and there were many cars and campervans set up by the time we got there at about 5pm. We popped up our tent, went for a walk along the beach, made our instant noodles followed by a bit of beef soup and watched a film on my laptop. Quite uncomfortable but it was something to do with no light!

8am we were up and COLD!!! So quickly got dressed, packed up our stuff and had breakfast in the car. We headed towards Cape Otway where the lighthouse was, but stopped several times as we had our first sighting of Kualas J It was much fun! Took some photos and went "aww cute". We didn't realise that you had to pay to see the lighthouse, $18 in fact, so we didn't bother with that. We stopped for lunch in Lorne which was a really nice, buzzing town, that had a Easter fate and many people in the sea surfing. Again we decided to try couch surfing for a warm place to stay and warm shower and managed to get a reply from a guy living in Geelorng. We stopped at a free lighthouse in Airey, went to Toquay...full of surfer shops! We stopped off to buy some bread for breakfast and bought an Easter egg for the guy who was hosting us that night. He was a nice guy, had a nice cute modern place. We just chilled and chatted and he invited us to watch the Pro-surfing the next morning for FREE! So we joined him in the morning at 8.30am to avoid the queue. It started off fairly warm and sunny so we passed through the food stalls and stood on the famous bells beach where the pro-surfers started the competition. I didn't realise how much of a patience game surfing was, as the surfers had to wait for a good wave. They were scored on their best 2 waves in half and hour and they compete with 1 other person and the winner gets through to the next round. The sun didn't stay up for long and all of a sudden it was windy, raining so we left and headed to the big city of mmmMMelbourne! Yihaaa .....