G'day Mate!

As our time in Australia is drawing to an end we were about to embark on our final journey with Oz Experience from Sydney to Melbourne in three days. We were up at the crack of dawn to get into the city, which meant leaving Rex and Vicky's at 5.30am to be at Liverpool Station for 6am. Once we'd got into Sydney we had to walk to the Oz Experience office to catch our bus. We were greeted by 'Coaster', a lively tour driver with a big box of games and lots of fluffy animals on his dashboard! We were in for a good time! Our first day started with a tour of Canberra where, from the lookout, we were able to see over the whole city including the large war memorial. We made our way into Canberra and saw the Old Parliament House (1927-1988) and its much larger, more impressive replacement marked by an 81m flagpole. We were shown around the Parliament House by Coaster and Wings, another Oz Experience driver. After our tour we had some lunch before heading to the National Museum of Australia where we had an hour and a half to look round all things Australian before heading to Thredbo - our first overnight stay of the trip. The weather took a turn for the worse and upon arrival in Thredbo it was well and truly pouring down! We stayed at The River Inn and were very impressed with our hotel for the night! Not only was there a Jacuzzi but there were also TVs and DVD players in the rooms! We arrived just in time for dinner and helped ourselves to some pizza before a few drinks in the bar and bed!

Morning arrived and it looked like the rain had continued throughout the night, it was still pouring down but we had to make a move nevertheless! Fully packed and dressed for winter, we made our way to Mount Kosciuszko - the tallest point in Australia. Reluctantly we boarded the chair lift to 1927 metres and got absolutely drenched in the process! Not only were we soaking wet but due to the distance above sea level, we were even colder than we had been at the bottom! There would usually be a hike from this point to the top but none of us were willing to walk it! We returned to the bus and swiftly changed into something dry! Once dried off we headed towards our lunch spot at the Platypus Reserve, although we didn't get to see any Platypus, we enjoyed our buffet style lunch and departed for Lakes Entrance. On the way we made a couple of short stops, the first of which was Cape Conran - an undeveloped part of the coast. The route to our next stop took us through an area which had been hit by bushfires the previous day; some bits were still on fire and smoking! We arrived at Boggy Creek Gorge which surprisingly appeared in the Lonely Planet, despite there not being much to see! We got to our hostel at Lakes Entrance which, in comparison to the previous nights stay, was a huge letdown! However, as we headed straight out to the fish and chip shop for dinner and then watched the sunset on Ninety Mile Beach, we didn't get into bed until late that night and were out by 6am the next day so the state of the hostel didn't really affect us!

Our final day was to be the longest with the early wake up call and late arrival into Melbourne. We set off for Wilsons Promontory National Park, stopping at Foster to pick up lunch supplies and a second breakfast! Once back on the bus and on our way again we were fortunate enough to see a range of rarely seen Australian wildlife including a group of 30+ Emu's, kangaroo's, wombats, wallabies and red-back spiders, all of which were completely wild and seen on the off chance.

We got to Tidal River and settled around a bench for lunch; once we'd tidied up we hiked (in flip flops!) around the Squeaky Beach Nature Walk where we reached one of the most Southernly points of Australia! We spent roughly half an hour lounging on Squeaky Beach where we also found a little penguin who had been washed up on the beach. We eventually ended up taking the penguin to the Rangers who believed he may have had a broken leg and kept him in overnight. Time was pushing on so we made one last stop for a toilet and snack break before heading straight through to Melbourne.

We'll update you on all things Melbourne soon!

Lots of love Sophie and Kie xx