I am currently in Virginia, SA. But I put the location as Apollo bay for the automatic route on the map, so it shows that I went on the Great Ocean Road.

19/03/13

We've been on the road for 24 hours and my god, it's a beautiful road. Let's start from the beginning and the drive out of Melbourne was wet, very wet. But by the time we got to Torquay, it had brightened up, we made lunch on Torquay beach and drove on, we must have stopped at most of the beaches on the way, just to sit and enjoy it, dip our toes and take photos. Mollie and Hailey are great fun to travel with and although me and Ben have felt a bit old at times, it's good to have young company. Just after Torquay was the world famous Bells Beach, famous for its surf competitions and of course the film; Point Break. Which only uses the name Bell's Beach and wasn't actually filmed there (I only found out when realising it looks nothing like the film). On the way to the beach we saw a huge kangaroo in the field, now, I've been here long enough and I've seen enough kangaroos to not really care, but this one was massive! This is the first of the Australian wildlife we were to come across on the trip. We carried on and I really can't do the road any justice without photos, so you'll have to wait until they're uploaded. When we got to Lorne, we had a coffee in the company of tons of cockatoos grazing on the grass and clean surf in the background, the wave peeling off beautifully. I will be back to surf the south coast. We pressed on and got to Apollo bay for dinner, Kangaroo burgers and corn on the cob. Simple and cheap, and the girls hadn't tried kangaroo before! Come on! Then, we had a few drinks, the guys in a campervan which was parked next to us came over and joined us, 1 more Canadian, 1 Scottsman and 1 German. We drank until late evening and I have a feeling Hailey and Ben were the most drunk, I had the morning shift, so I stopped drinking earlier. We spent the night in the car, all 4 of us. Not exactly the most comfortable, but the fact that we'd been up since 5:30 and we'd had a few drinks helped. I don't have a sleeping bag, but I didn't feel the cold at all. Woke up at about 8am and went to the beach, just to wake up a bit and when we got on the move, our first stop was Otway lighthouse which is where I'm finding time to write this up, you had to pay $18 to go and see it, and I'm sorry, but a lighthouse is a lighthouse and I've seen plenty. Next stop, 12 Apostles! OH! I almost forgot to mention about the f***ton of Koalas! We were driving along and saw a group of Asians just taking photos of a tree, turned out to be a baby Koala, the cutest fluffiest little thing I've ever seen. Then we saw another one when we were driving further down the road, a huge beast of a f***er. Now, having seen Cockatoos, Kangaroos and Surfing we just have Snakes, Spiders and Red dirt to see to make this the most Australian section of Australia!

21/03/13

The rest of that day we drove to the 12 apostles, the day was a beautifully sunny day, quite in contrast of today's rainy welcome to Adelaide, but I won't get ahead of myself. When we approached the apostles, we were all struck with awe. They were bigger and more magnificent than we had imagined, the size, structure and seemingly randomness of these geological sculptures were incredible. One detail I picked up on was how the waves were coming in and almost perfectly aligning with the shadow of the cliffs, a perfect representation of how they were formed. I probably wouldn't have noticed them had we not been there at that specific time of day (for the shadow to form on the shoreline) and that time of the month (for the tide to be at the right height) I'm probably underselling it, but it was pretty cool, trust me. We carried on driving and decided to stop at a hostel instead of trying to sleep in the car. The hostel was in Warrnambool and honestly, if I had more time, I'd spend longer there. They have surfboards for hire, the hostel itself was incredibly clean, friendly and a massive communal area. The bar was tiny but cheap enough and it was only $22 for the night we were there. If they had free wifi, it would be perfect. By the time we got here, at the end of the 2nd day, it was pretty clear that we weren't getting on with the Canadians as well as we'd hoped. Nothing against them, they're nice girls, we're just different people.

Day #3, we were all refreshed having had a glorious shower. Not much happened this day, we just drove. Drove all day. Set off at about 10am and got to Adelaide at about, well, 10pm. We stopped at Mt Gambier for lunch, just beside 'leg of mutton lake' which had a bbq area, so I opted for chicken kebabs and potato salad where the girls had steak sandwiches. This lake was beside the more impressive 'Blue lake' a giant, very blue, volcanic lake. Apart from the sea along the great ocean road, it is the bluest body of water I've seen, I hope the pictures do it justice. We reached a small town by around 6pm and another bbq was in order, $3 for some 'english style' PORK sausages! You don't know how good that is, the sausages over here are generally beef and pork sausages are 'premium', thus costing more. It was good to have real sausages again. We carried on driving planning to stop in Murray Bridge at a hostel, alas, it was full. Probably for the best, the place stunk to high heaven and the only people we saw in there were either Asian or Mari looking type, who all stopped talking and turned around when we walked in. That's how it felt anyway. We were 75km from Adelaide at this point and at 9pm we decided to just drive straight there. We got there and parked up, jumped into the nearest hostel we could find and paid $25 each for 4 bed dorm which had an en-suite. To be fair, it was grotty as f***, but it was for 1 night and I didn't even bother using the bathroom.

The next day, we got up early to see if we could return the car and to move hostel. Turns out if we return the car 2 days early it's actually more expensive than if we return it 1 day early. That's logic! So we kept it for an extra day to save money. We took our bags to the new hostel and dropped the girls at their hostel. I'd say it was more of a relief leaving them, it's a shame we didn't really get on, but we weren't in it purely for the company, more to split the cost. It would have been nice, sure, but there was so much beautiful stuff to see that it really didn't matter all that much. When we got to the hostel and checked in, we had a look around and made a cup of tea, provided by the hostel. However, they were out of milk, this was a problem quickly overcome with a girl, Cat, letting us use her milk. After finishing off the biscuits from my birthday, the 3 of us; Me, Ben and Cat, headed off to the Barossa Valley for some wine tasting! We figured, we've got the car so we may as well use it for something we won't be able to do after returning it. In the valley we went to 'Two Hands' and tried 10 different wines, most of which were fantastic and we bought a bottle between the 3 of us called 'Never tear us apart', it was a thick, dark red and held so much flavour we decided to buy steak to have it with later. I cooked dauphinoise potatoes to go with the steak and a bit of asparagus and broccoli really made it a classy dish. I couldn't tell if the others in the hostel were jealous or thought that we were pompous p**** sat there with our restaurant standard meal. To be honest, I couldn't give a s***, it was awesome.

22/03/13

Today started extremely productive; We dropped the car back, got a haircut, shopped around for a sleeping bag, bought a sleeping back, returned an item and replaced it, had breakfast and got back to the hostel by 11am. The 6 hours after that were just sorting out and uploading pictures followed by a nap. It was raining most of the day, so I don't feel like it was wasted, plus it was good to chill after the hectic morning. Knowing I have nothing to do over the weekend, if the weather improves I'll attempt to see more of the city and the surrounding gardens.

25/03/13

I never thought a city which I knew nothing about could hold so many interesting things. At the weekend, I did see more of the city, and the weather was beautiful, besides 1 shower when we were taking a rest from cycling, but I'll get to that. The Saturday showed us the sunny side of Adelaide and we went to the southern parklands, not sure if I said but the CBD is surrounded by parks, it's like a lake of gardens with an island city. As I said, we went to the southern parklands which were very dry, not a lot of lush green grass to sit on and partly owned by a school. They just finished a cricket game, but on the football pitch a Saturday league was just starting. We sat down, picked sides and watched the game. My side won. After watching the game and lying in the sun for a bit, we walked up through town grabbing a bite to eat and arriving at the north parklands. My god, they trump the south. Lush green grass, a river, ducks, pelicans and a couple of wedding photo shoots proved this is a lot nicer. We stayed there for the rest of the afternoon, playing frisbee, reading and the grass by the river, although partly covered by duck s***, was so spongy it was like a little grassy bed. I could have slept. The walk home I discovered that Ben had never eaten a chicken parmy, an Australian adaption of the Italian dish the Parmiana, the Chicken Parmy is available everywhere and is f***ing lush. A breaded chicken breast topped with ham, cooked tomatos and melted cheese. With this in mind, I planned to cook it for us for dinner, alas, Coles was shut. At 5pm. On a Saturday? Who does that?! I had an omelete for dinner.

Yesterday was my last day in Adelaide and although I was shattered and just wanted to lie on the sofa and watch films or TV I did quite the reverse. Adelaide has free bike hire! You just have to leave your ID as a deposit and away you go! Perfect. So we 'hired' bikes and cycled about 25km to the beach. It was s***. Truly awful. This is just one of the beaches near adelaide, so I'm not going to say that all Adelaide beaches are s***, just South Glenelg. We started to cycle back, stopping at a lake to chill out for about 20minutes. I know what you're thinking. Hard life, right? This is when it rained, for about 5 minutes just a little shower that went as quickly as it came. Our route home was via North Glenelg around the airport and along the river back to the CBD. This is where I got a flat. About 20km away from the hire centre. We walked back making it just in time to avoid the overnight charge. And we were shattered. Luckily we managed to get the stuff for the chicken parmy that morning, meaning we had an awesome dinner. The pub was the next logical step for the last time I'll see Ben for a long time. A couple of beers at the sports bar topped off an awesome coule of weeks.

Now, as I sit here on the bus to Virginia for my remaining 18 days farm work, I realise I don't have internet and won't be able to upload this until I figure out a way to get to an access point.

(26/03/13 - Well, that didn't take long!)