My Great Ocean Road trip!
Door: Linda
Blijf op de hoogte en volg Linda
14 Januari 2016 | Australië, Darwin
Great Ocean Road Trip
Ok, so Saturday night I was busy trying to decide what to bring on my Great Ocean Road trip. I don’t know why, but I had the idea that I wasn’t going to be able to reach my suitcase during the trip, so I wanted to put some stuff together.
Alright, it took me quite a while to put my stuff together, I didn’t get into bed until 11pm. Now I was in a room for 3 people and the other beds were occupied, but I never saw them. They weren’t there when I was packing, they didn’t come in until 2am…came into the room a couple of times, which was great, because my bed was right next to the door, do the light of the corridor was shining in my face! Finally around 3am they went to bed, they turned the fan on, which I had turned off, because of the noise it made!! I had opened the windows, but that didn’t help much.
So another night from hell!! Well, luckily for them I had to get up early. I did try to be quiet, but I didn’t really mind making a bit of noise after the noise they made during the night!! I got up around 6:30am, I didn’t have to be at the company until 7:30am, but I wanted to have some breakfast before we left. I didn’t have to go far though, the company was right next door!
I went to the company and checked in. They told me to wait for the driver and the bus, so I sat there waiting. Everyone got on a bus and I was still sitting there, so I asked someone about it and it turned out that the driver and bus were already there!! Everyone had already gotten on, I was the last one, but no one asked me anything!! That was kind of a bummer, because it was full!! Such a big country and then they have such a small bus to take us around in!!
I got to sit next to an Italian lady, who was very grumpy already, but became even more grumpy when she had to take her big bag off of the chair I wanted to sit in. It was too big to put on the floor by her legs, so she had to keep it in her lap.
We were to leave around 7:30am, but it wasn’t until a quarter to 8 before we really set off! Our driver and guide was Simon, he has been a guide almost all of the world and he was going to take us on this three day trip! If we had any questions we should just ask them, if he didn’t know the answer, he would make one up!
Because of the bushfires that have been going on, some parts of the Great Ocean Road have been closed. Which basically meant that we were not able to go to the Otway NP and the Otway lighthouse, but Simon knew another place to go and we wouldn’t miss any of the highlights. It didn’t really bother me, I’m rather safe than sorry. If the fire departments thought the fires were still likely to flare up again, I would rather not go there! People have lost their houses and I had seen some pictures of a wallaby with burns and that made me really sad!!
Simon told us that the Great Ocean Road was built by the veterans of the WOI, diggers as they call them. They came home with what we would now call Posttraumatic stress and they needed some structure and something to do, so the government decided to have them build this road. It took them 13 years and they did this as volunteers, they hardly got paid a dime really. I told Simone they must have really been shellshocked, otherwise they would’ve asked for a raise!
Ok, so the first place we went to was Torquay the start of the Great Ocean Road, a good surfing spot. But then most of the places along this road are good surfing spots! Now when we left Melbourne it wasn’t particularly warm and sunny, but when we got off of the bus in Torquay, I put on my vest and my scarf, it was really, really windy and cold!!!!
Simon threw us off the bus for about an hour, so he could go and do some shopping for our lunch and dinner that evening. So I walked over to the ocean and took some beautiful pictures! It was soo windy, the trees were growing to one side! I got some tea and I went to a toilet before I got back on the bus.
Our next stop was Bells Beach, where they did a scene for Point Break with Patrick Swayze. Here of course it was also very windy, but it was beautiful!!
Then Simon took us to the other lighthouse he knew of, Split Point Lighthouse. Which we almost didn’t get to see, because we weren’t the only ones with the idea to come here! It was hard to find a place to park, we were on a bus, but we also had a small trailer for our luggage! But he managed and we could climb up the hill to see the lighthouse and an amazing view!!!
When I was climbing the hill, there was a man with his dog that didn’t want to move a muscle. He wanted to go up, but the dog thought otherwise! Then when I came down at least 10 minutes later, the man and his dog were still standing there!! Really, she (I know because they called her Daisy) had dug her heels in and wasn’t going anywhere!! I don’t know why she didn’t want to budge, but she kept looking down…now that I think of it, the man looked like he had had a stroke before, so maybe she thought it would be too strenuous for him to go up…I hope they didn’t make her go!
During the drive we made a few other foto stops, among them at the Memorial Arch, a wooden arch across the Great Ocean Road. This is a memorial for the men that made the road. Now I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but they have done all of this work for 13 years, hardly got paid for it and all they get is a wooden arch…ok, there was also a beautiful statue, but still…it seemed like they could have done more for him. I’m glad Simon had pointed it out to us.
In Lorne we stopped for lunch, Simon got us some oysters. Not that he liked them very much, he only bought them to see the faces of people who try them for the first time!!! Then we found a very nice spot to have our lunch right by the ocean!! Simon needed some time to set it all up, so he ordered us off of the bus and to go and do something for about 15 minutes!
It all looked very good, he had the oysters, prawns, bread, salads, wraps and chicken, enough to feed an army when there were only 24 of us! It was all very nice! I didn’t try any oysters, I think the people that ate them had eaten them before and liked them. He had bought everything but cutlery, so we had to eat with our hands, which was a bit of a shame, but I got over it.
There was a toilet nearby, which I have used a couple of times. With the wind and all I had to go a bit more often than usual. Anyway, there was a lady from our group, who went into the toilet before me. When she came out, she told me it wasn’t the cleanest toilet I had ever seen, but she had nothing to do with that. That was funny! Turned out she was right too! Haha When I got into the toilet I found her phone and she was sooo happy, because all of her holiday pictures were on it!
At Lorne the road was closed, so we had to go on a little detour. We drove through the rainforest of the Otways, according to Simon this was the most southern rainforest. In a place called Colac we had a little break, Simon had to fill up the bus with gas and he couldn’t do that with us in it, so we had to get out and get some coffee or something.
Simon told us to keep our eyes open for koala’s and kangaroos and when he yelled out that he saw a kangaroo, it turned out to be a sign saying we had to watch out, because they might cross the road!! Hahah
We passed the 12 Apostles and the Loch Ard Gorge, but because it was very busy we didn’t stop there, we would do that first thing the next morning. Which we all agreed with! Simon took us to a lookout for a rock called Baker’s Oven, on our way there some stupid tourist tried to turn around!! Not that he was very quick about it, when he saw us coming, he stopped in the middle of the road instead of putting his foot on the gas to get the hell out of the way!! Idiot!!!!
They call this rock the Baker’s Oven, because there’s a hole in it, that makes it look like one. But then you could also call it a pizza oven, but what’s in a name anyway! It doesn’t matter what the name is, it was really just beautiful!
A couple of minutes more on the road and we were in Port Campbell, where we checked into a hostel. It’s not a really big city, kind of like Bridport, it will only get really busy in the summer! I was going to share a room with two other people from our group and I hoped it would stay that way, but unfortunately all the beds were occupied and they even put an extra bed in the room.
Anyway, Simon got himself busy in the kitchen and I walked around Port Campbell for a while. I got some postcards and wrote them over a cup of tea at a bar in the main street. Around 8pm dinner was ready and he had really outdone himself!! He had made lamb out of the oven, with grilled vegetables and baked potatoes, this was a big step up from the frozen pizzas we were expecting!!! The plates were cleared at the end of the evening! All he asked us to do was clean the plates, he had already cleaned the kitchen. That was a reasonable thing to do after all he had done for us!
I was sitting with a couple of people from the UK and someone from the Netherlands, who didn’t realize I was from the Netherlands also, until someone asked me where I was from. I have that effect on people! We talked about our day, what we had done in Australia before we came on this trip and we played some card game, which I have forgotten the name of. But it was a lot of fun!
Around 10pm I said goodnight, it had been a long day. Thinking I was the first one to go to bed, but it turned out that I wasn’t. So I couldn’t really pack up all of my stuff, like I had planned to do. I didn’t sleep all that much, different noises, new bed and all.
Monday morning we were going to leave the hostel around 8:15am, I had set my alarm, but I was up way before it went off. Everyone was still sleeping, so I just got up to get dressed. When I was done with that, I went downstairs for breakfast. And Simon had put some stuff out for us to make sandwiches for lunch that afternoon. After breakfast, around 7:30am, I thought everyone would be up, so I could pack up my stuff. But the other people were not from our group and didn’t have to get up early, so they were still sleeping. I got a little ticked off about this, so I’m afraid I wasn’t as quiet as I would have been otherwise….
So as I said we were to leave around 8:15am, but the Italian lady decided to go to the bathroom, so we had to wait for her.
Our first stop today was the Loch Ard Gorge, which was a beautiful place!! We could climb down a stairs to get down onto a beach, full of sand of course and also my shoes when I came back up! Yuk, I really don’t like sand in my shoes!! The story goes that in the years of settlement a ship was wrecked off the gorge and two survivors went into it and one of them climbed out to get help. Looking at the ocean outside of the gorge it was not hard to imagine that ships would go down there! Water coming out of the gorge tore into the water that wanted to go into the gorge, it is always amazing to look at the violence of the ocean!!
Again we had to wait for the Italian lady to come back, she decided to go down some path which Simon had told us not to do, because it would take too long…her English wasn’t all that good, I don’t think she got half of what Simon told us!
Our next stop was the 12 Apostles!! Simon had already told us about a scenic helicopter flight we could do over the apostles and this morning I had decided to go for it!!!! I had asked Simon if we would still have time to walk down to the apostles after the helicopter flight, because I kind of wanted to do both and he said there was time afterwards.
First he dropped off the people going on the flight, which of course the Italian lady didn’t get, because she wanted to get off too, but she wasn’t going to do the flight….
Anyway, there were 6 of us. We got a little yellow pouch around our waists, our life jackets and a little explanation about how to use it. Kind of like the ones you get when you go on the big planes. I guess you will not have enough time to get the life jacket from under the seat when something goes wrong, a lot closer to the ground than big air planes!
So the 6 of us got divided into 2 groups, which was good, because now we could all sit by a window to look out! The other group went up first and when I saw the helicopter go up, I told the guy in our group, he could have the seat next to the pilot!!!! The tail went up first, man, no way was I going to sit in the front seat to look at that.
Unfortunately we had to wait for the other group to come back, there were only 2 helicopters and the other went out for a longer flight. I was in the seat behind the pilot and our take off was a lot smoother than the other groups!! I have never been on a helicopter before, so I did take a pill before going up. Didn’t want to have any surprises while we were in the air. But this was great!!! It wasn’t a very long flight, but it went smoother than some of the flights I have had these past weeks!! Even the turns didn’t bother me!! Ok because of the rotors there’s a vibration in the helicopter throughout the flight, but that wasn’t all that bad.
It was amazing!!! We went all the way back to the Bakers Oven rock, we saw the gorge from the air and the 12 Apostles of course! The pilot told us that originally there were 8 rocks and one crumbled so now there are 7….but Simon had told us there were 9 originally and now there are 8…well, the only thing we know for sure is that there were never 12 as in the apostles, they only call them that…
We were supposed to leave around 10:15am and we were back on the ground around 10am…the walk to the apostles took about 30 minutes, return trip, so there was no time to go out there to look at them. Which I really didn’t like…but then there would have been a lot of sand down there, so at least I didn’t get any of that in my shoes!! But with the Italian lady late all the time and because we had to wait for the other group to come back with the helicopter…o well, like I said no sand in my shoes wasn’t all that bad!
When we were all back on the bus we had to make a little detour back to the hostel, someone had forgotten to take his beer from the fridge!! When the guy got his beer, we headed down to the rock known as London Bridge. This piece of rock used to be attached to land, but I think it was in 1990, the piece that was attached to the land crumbled to the see, so now it is just a solitary rock. So I guess the song “London bridge is falling down” came in handy here!! It is amazing to see! And when you see the force of the waves, you can imagine rock crumbling to the sea at last. It kind of looks like the Bakers Oven rock, but then the hole here is bigger.
The last stop on the GOR was the lookout for the Bay of Islands or the Bay of Martyrs. Why it has two names, Simon couldn’t really tell us. Anyway, it is a group of rocks along the road and again the view was amazing!! After looking at all of these sights and seeing all of these amazing views, I hope that the veterans that made this road could at least enjoy this view also.
Simon had to go shopping again for dinner that evening and he did so in Warrnambool, the last city for the GOR. We stopped at a shopping mall, where we could go out and do some shopping of our own. It may not have been the best place to spend an hour, but Simon had to get his groceries somewhere. Of course our cranky Italian lady had to comment on this, she didn’t come on this trip to go shopping, she wanted to see kangaroos and koala’s…as if Simon could summon them for her and we still did like to eat!! Stupid cow!
The hour was gone before we knew it and Simon had done his best again, a whole cartload full of stuff!!! After the shopping we went to the Tower Hill, an extinct volcano, where we were going to have lunch. Simon told us to keep an eye out for koala’s and one member of our group actually spotted one. So Simon stopped the bus and everyone jumped off, I think the cranky Italian lady was the first one the be at the tree!! At first I didn’t want to go, I wanted everyone to just leave it alone, but how many times would I get to see a koala in the wild?! So I went out also. But I just took a picture and went back into the bus. The Italian lady was standing too close to the tree of course…
Before we got off of the bus Simon warned us about the roaming emu’s that were there. They liked to snatch the sandwiches out of people’s hands if they got the chance, so we had to keep an eye on them. Now I don’t like birds, especially not the kinds that hover around me with those beady little eyes!!
He also told us that after lunch we could walk around if we wanted to and see if we could find any snakes. Now I don’t really like snakes either, I think some in our group did find them, but I didn’t go out to look for them.
Before we left me and a German guy from our group took some of our garbage to a bin I had seen near the toilets. As we walked back to the bus we saw some people standing underneath a tree, so we went over to take a look. And sure enough, there was another koala sleeping there!! Of course I didn’t have my camera with me at that time….anyway, it was sleeping soundly, had all four of it’s paws in a good grip on the tree!!
We decided not to tell the others, otherwise the poor thing would have been woken up by 24 strangers with camera’s!
After lunch we had a good ways to go to the Grampians, where we were going to spend the night in a lodge. In Dunkeld we took a short break and as we were driving through a place called Halls Gap, Simon noticed his tank was almost empty, so it would be a good time to fill it up. So we had another little break here, I bought some postcards and some apple pie ice cream!
When Simon was ready and we were about to drive to Reid’s Lookout, someone in our group spotted a kangaroo…you will not believe the speed with which our cranky Italian lady got off of the bus, once Simon parked it!
There was a female kangaroo with a joey in it’s pouch and later a male kangaroo arrived with a younger kangaroo. They must have been accustomed to people, because they didn’t run away, while again I think they were getting too close to the poor animal. And Simon gave it potato chips, which I also think wasn’t a good idea.
Anyway, when everyone had taken enough pictures and had gotten back on the bus, we really went to the lookout. Along the way we spotted another group of kangaroos and the Italian lady practically ordered Simon to stop the bus, but he either didn’t hear her or he didn’t want to hear her, because we kept on driving. Besides we’re not going to chase wild animals, hence the word wild!!! Stupid cow!! I think she must have been from the Italian country side and has never been outside of that village before now!! I mean really!
According to Simon this view should be listed in our top 3 of best views ever seen in our lives…and ok, it really was beautiful!!! We spend some time staring ahead of us, before driving on to the lodge. It had rained a little, so on our way down we saw a big rainbow!
So we were making our way through the Grampians, named by a Major Mitchell, after the Grampians he had seen in Scotland. He thought they looked alike….very original! Goes to show you where names will come from really, there was a mountain which he had named Asses Ears, because he thought it looked like the mountain on St. Helena…and he named another mountain Mt. Zero, because when he went to bed it was very hot, but by the time he woke up the temperature had dropped considerably….
Anyway, we were going to stay at the Asses Ears Wilderness Lodge, which had cabins, camping grounds and an airfield. Some people in our group were going camping, so they had to put up the tents when we got there. We thought it was going to rain, but they were lucky, nothing happened!!
I had cabin nr. 7,which I shared with one other woman and 2 men from our group. It was very hot in the cabin and we wanted to turn on the airconditioning, but there was only warm air coming out…it turned out to be a heater. So we left the door and the windows open to get some air. When I had dropped my stuff, I went over to the kitchen to see if I could help Simon out with his cooking. We were running a little late, so I thought I could help him chop some veggies. The woman that was staying my cabin was also there and together we chopped tomatoes, cucumbers and garlic. Which Simon turned into chicken from the oven, several salads with couscous and prawns. It all looked very good and tasted great.
There were also a couple of dogs at the lodge, sheep dogs. One of them walked with me and Emma out to the airfield, to see if we could spot some kangaroos. And we did see some! I caught one on my camera, but the rest ran off as soon as they saw us coming!! The dog started limping at one point and it turned out that he had some of the prickly plant in his paw. I had just gotten rid of those from my socks, so I kind of knew what I was looking for! He let me take it out and he continued walking.
While we were having dinner there was also a beautiful sunset, which I got to take pictures of! After dinner we cleaned up the plates he had used, we all ate off of plastic plates, so there wasn’t all that much to clean up today. And Simon got us to throw his boomerang around for a while. But I’m not very good at it, stupid thing won’t come back!
When it got dark we sat in the bar where there was a huge couch and we watched some tv. Now before we got to the lodge, Simon told us that we should all have a wingman, because the owner of the lodge liked to chat…big time! So whenever we saw the owner talking to someone and especially Simon, we were to jump in and tell him we needed his help for something! I don’t know if it worked, maybe he wasn’t all that talkative tonight, but I didn’t see anyone get caught by him!
Some played pool and I talked to another person from the group I hadn’t talked to yet. Around 11pm I was done for the day and I wanted to walk back to the cabin. I had brought my flashlight, thinking ahead that it might be very dark…and it was!!! I took the woman I had been talking to with me, because she also wanted to go, but didn’t have a flashlight. It was hilarious walking around in the dark like that, trying to find our own cabin! But we found it!
Now this dark, was a real dark. But when you looked up to the sky there were a million stars!!! The night was soo clear you could see them all and the Milky Way and they looked to be so close you could grab them, it was really amazing!!!!
So we had left the door of the cabin open all day, the night had turned cooler, but not as cool as to need the heater during the night. Only thing was while leaving the door open, it invited not only the fresh air to come in, but animals to come in too. And you know I mean insects!! We had to get rid of a moth! I thought it would stay near the ceiling, but as I was about to get ready to get into bed, it came down onto my bed and I definitely don’t like that to happen while I’m sleeping!!!!
The cabin had bunkbeds, I think the owner had made them himself, because they were of sturdy wood and the setup was a bit strange. My bunkbed was against the far wall, with another bunkbed placed at an angle at the foot of mine. Besides this was the stairs to get up onto the top bunk of my bunkbed…which didn’t give me a lot of space to get into the bottom bunk…plus all of the beds made considerable noise!
One of the guys had one of the top bunks and as soon as he had hauled himself up into the bed, I knew we were going to be in trouble! I was panting and breathing from the effort of climbing in and as I had foreseen, he started snoring as soon as he was asleep!!!! Great!!!
About 10 minutes after that I had to climb out of bed to get some mosquito spray on, because there was one nagging me already! I guess it really worked, because I didn’t hear anything after that and I didn’t have any bites on my arms and legs! Then later that night, one of the girls from our group came into the came with her flashlight, to get her phone back…she was one of the group that were camping and she had plugged it in to charge here…Why couldn’t she just wait until the next day to get it back instead of waking us all up in the middle of the night???
We weren’t about to leave very early that morning, but I got up early anyway. With all the snoring and noise from getting in and out of bed, there wasn’t much sleep to be had anyway. I got up and got dressed and I went to have some breakfast. I also put yesterday’s pictures on my usb stick, otherwise I would really get confused!!
We were supposed to leave at a quarter to 9, but of course it didn’t work out that way. Some people were going back to Melbourne with Simon, so these suitcases had to get into the trailer first. But people just left their stuff outside the trailer, thinking it would get in there by itself. So I started loading the thing up, when someone said I should let the guys handle that…but there wasn’t one about and like I said the bags weren’t going in there by themselves.
So by the time we were ready to go, the owner came to say goodbye, so it took another 10 minutes before we actually left. One of the sheepdogs was herding us off of the property is what Simon said…I think the dog was just happy to be chasing the bus!
The cranky Italian lady was even more cranky this morning. The day before I had taken the seat by the window, because I didn’t want to stand there waiting for her to finally hop on board in the morning. But at the end of the day I couldn’t feel my knees anymore, so when she indicated that I could have that seat again, I told her that she could have it, I wasn’t going to sit there anymore. She was a lot smaller then I was and she had plenty of space for her legs. I don’t think she was very happy with this arrangement! But I really didn’t give a shit!
We were supposed to go for a 40 minute walk to a waterfall, but a fallen tree had blocked to road, so we couldn’t go there. Which didn’t bother me, because it was already very hot and the prospect of walking in that heat for 40 minutes, didn’t really appeal to me. But we went to another point from where we could walk to the falls and that was only 20 minutes…first going down and then of course we had to go back up again…
We walked to McKenzies falls and it was amazing!!!! Ok yes, my knees didn’t really appreciate the walk down, it had an incline and there were some steps. But to see the falls was just great, really it was almost a hidden jem. And it was certainly more of a waterfall then the one I tried to find at the Blue Mountains near Sydney!!! Walking back I took my time and drank a lot of water! It was too hot to run back to the bus!
Our next stop was the Boroka Lookout, which according to Simon should rank in the top 4 of best views ever seen…but he was wrong on this one! Really this view shouldn’t be on any list really! It wasn’t as good as the one we had seen yesterday, or the ones I have seen in other countries.
Then we drove back to Halls Gap, where we had seen the kangaroos the day before, who wisely stayed away this morning! We went to the Bambruk Cultural Center, which told us about the flora and fauna found in the Grampians, but also about the Aboriginal culture. Simon has had the privilege of living among a couple of tribes to learn their language and he is very passionate about them, can’t believe all of the things that he had been taught in school about them, because it was all so wrong.
Seeing as how passionate he was and how much he wanted us to get to know this culture too, we didn’t get a whole lot of time to actually get into it. He also told us to try one of the emu or kangaroo pie here, but that took some time to make, so we didn’t leave on time unfortunately. I had bought a kangaroo pie and it was really good…it would have been better if I had had time to eat it properly…now I had to eat it while we were driving and of course I couldn’t use a knife and fork...Note to self: never eat a pie while sitting on a moving bus!!
This was our last stop of the tour, we drove on to Horsham, where the people who would go onto Adelaide would get off of this bus. But before we got there, Simon had one more stop to make. You know how the US has these Giant….whatever you can think of things?! Well, Australia has them too! He stopped at the Giant Koala, where we took a group picture!!!!
Now I don’t know if the cranky Italian lady really didn’t get it or that she was deliberately walking the other way, but she could see us all going over to the koala and standing together for a picture. But she wasn’t in it and no one really cared to ask her to join us!
We were in Horsham around 1:30pm, where I among others got off of Simons bus, ready to take a greyhound sort of bus on to Adelaide. Simon gave us our tickets and a hug and then he was off back to Melbourne.
I went over to a bakery with the couple from the UK and we had a small lunch there. As we were eating we were talking about the tour, the group of people and the fact that I was sitting next to the cranky Italian lady the whole trip. I told them about the fact that I had seen a second koala at Tower Hill and didn’t tell anyone. Then Victoria told me about what had happened that afternoon.
Turned out they had seen the same koala some time before me. She was standing there watching it, when the Italian lady was banging a stick at the tree where the koala was sleeping in. So Victoria, being very passionate about animals, asked her kindly to stop doing that. Victoria said she completely ignored her and threw the stick at the tree…upon which Victoria asked her in a slightly less friendly manner if she could stop doing that. Victoria said she had picked up another stick and was aiming it at the tree, but Victoria grabbed her arm and told her in her face that is she was going to throw that stick, she would be in a lot of trouble!!!! Victoria said she had become so angry she had to walk away, or she would have seriously hit her over the head with that stick!! Later she told Simon about what had happened, not to cause any trouble, but just so he knew about it too. He really didn’t mind, but he called his office right away to tell them about this lady, in case she starts complaining about either him or Victoria.
Unbelievable, like I said she must have been from the country! Why on earth would you want to throw a stick at a sleeping animal up in a tree??? There was one other Italian on board and even he thought she was nuts! Really, I told Victoria that it was a shame I didn’t know about this before, or I would have never sat down next to her again!!
Around a quarter past 2 we got on the bigger bus and I was lucky that the seat beside me was empty, it was very busy! The first couple of hours the scenery didn’t change at all, it was flat and yellow. But amazing clouds though!! In Tintaranga we had a half an hour break and then we realized the time changed again. We were supposed to be in Adelaide around 7:30pm, but that was Melbourne time, in Adelaide it was half an hour later! Don’t you just love all of these different states!!!
The busstation was really close to the YHA, which was very nice. A couple of other women from the group were also staying there, so we all walked over there together. As soon as I was checked in, I dumped my stuff and I went out to find something to eat with Emma, from the UK.
I will write my Adelaide adventures on a new page, I see this one story has already gotten up to 12 pages….I had a lot of fun on this tour, I’m glad I did it! I have seen some amazing things, done an amazing thing and I’ve met some very nice people…not counting the cranky Italian lady of course!!!
Love
Linda
Ok, so Saturday night I was busy trying to decide what to bring on my Great Ocean Road trip. I don’t know why, but I had the idea that I wasn’t going to be able to reach my suitcase during the trip, so I wanted to put some stuff together.
Alright, it took me quite a while to put my stuff together, I didn’t get into bed until 11pm. Now I was in a room for 3 people and the other beds were occupied, but I never saw them. They weren’t there when I was packing, they didn’t come in until 2am…came into the room a couple of times, which was great, because my bed was right next to the door, do the light of the corridor was shining in my face! Finally around 3am they went to bed, they turned the fan on, which I had turned off, because of the noise it made!! I had opened the windows, but that didn’t help much.
So another night from hell!! Well, luckily for them I had to get up early. I did try to be quiet, but I didn’t really mind making a bit of noise after the noise they made during the night!! I got up around 6:30am, I didn’t have to be at the company until 7:30am, but I wanted to have some breakfast before we left. I didn’t have to go far though, the company was right next door!
I went to the company and checked in. They told me to wait for the driver and the bus, so I sat there waiting. Everyone got on a bus and I was still sitting there, so I asked someone about it and it turned out that the driver and bus were already there!! Everyone had already gotten on, I was the last one, but no one asked me anything!! That was kind of a bummer, because it was full!! Such a big country and then they have such a small bus to take us around in!!
I got to sit next to an Italian lady, who was very grumpy already, but became even more grumpy when she had to take her big bag off of the chair I wanted to sit in. It was too big to put on the floor by her legs, so she had to keep it in her lap.
We were to leave around 7:30am, but it wasn’t until a quarter to 8 before we really set off! Our driver and guide was Simon, he has been a guide almost all of the world and he was going to take us on this three day trip! If we had any questions we should just ask them, if he didn’t know the answer, he would make one up!
Because of the bushfires that have been going on, some parts of the Great Ocean Road have been closed. Which basically meant that we were not able to go to the Otway NP and the Otway lighthouse, but Simon knew another place to go and we wouldn’t miss any of the highlights. It didn’t really bother me, I’m rather safe than sorry. If the fire departments thought the fires were still likely to flare up again, I would rather not go there! People have lost their houses and I had seen some pictures of a wallaby with burns and that made me really sad!!
Simon told us that the Great Ocean Road was built by the veterans of the WOI, diggers as they call them. They came home with what we would now call Posttraumatic stress and they needed some structure and something to do, so the government decided to have them build this road. It took them 13 years and they did this as volunteers, they hardly got paid a dime really. I told Simone they must have really been shellshocked, otherwise they would’ve asked for a raise!
Ok, so the first place we went to was Torquay the start of the Great Ocean Road, a good surfing spot. But then most of the places along this road are good surfing spots! Now when we left Melbourne it wasn’t particularly warm and sunny, but when we got off of the bus in Torquay, I put on my vest and my scarf, it was really, really windy and cold!!!!
Simon threw us off the bus for about an hour, so he could go and do some shopping for our lunch and dinner that evening. So I walked over to the ocean and took some beautiful pictures! It was soo windy, the trees were growing to one side! I got some tea and I went to a toilet before I got back on the bus.
Our next stop was Bells Beach, where they did a scene for Point Break with Patrick Swayze. Here of course it was also very windy, but it was beautiful!!
Then Simon took us to the other lighthouse he knew of, Split Point Lighthouse. Which we almost didn’t get to see, because we weren’t the only ones with the idea to come here! It was hard to find a place to park, we were on a bus, but we also had a small trailer for our luggage! But he managed and we could climb up the hill to see the lighthouse and an amazing view!!!
When I was climbing the hill, there was a man with his dog that didn’t want to move a muscle. He wanted to go up, but the dog thought otherwise! Then when I came down at least 10 minutes later, the man and his dog were still standing there!! Really, she (I know because they called her Daisy) had dug her heels in and wasn’t going anywhere!! I don’t know why she didn’t want to budge, but she kept looking down…now that I think of it, the man looked like he had had a stroke before, so maybe she thought it would be too strenuous for him to go up…I hope they didn’t make her go!
During the drive we made a few other foto stops, among them at the Memorial Arch, a wooden arch across the Great Ocean Road. This is a memorial for the men that made the road. Now I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but they have done all of this work for 13 years, hardly got paid for it and all they get is a wooden arch…ok, there was also a beautiful statue, but still…it seemed like they could have done more for him. I’m glad Simon had pointed it out to us.
In Lorne we stopped for lunch, Simon got us some oysters. Not that he liked them very much, he only bought them to see the faces of people who try them for the first time!!! Then we found a very nice spot to have our lunch right by the ocean!! Simon needed some time to set it all up, so he ordered us off of the bus and to go and do something for about 15 minutes!
It all looked very good, he had the oysters, prawns, bread, salads, wraps and chicken, enough to feed an army when there were only 24 of us! It was all very nice! I didn’t try any oysters, I think the people that ate them had eaten them before and liked them. He had bought everything but cutlery, so we had to eat with our hands, which was a bit of a shame, but I got over it.
There was a toilet nearby, which I have used a couple of times. With the wind and all I had to go a bit more often than usual. Anyway, there was a lady from our group, who went into the toilet before me. When she came out, she told me it wasn’t the cleanest toilet I had ever seen, but she had nothing to do with that. That was funny! Turned out she was right too! Haha When I got into the toilet I found her phone and she was sooo happy, because all of her holiday pictures were on it!
At Lorne the road was closed, so we had to go on a little detour. We drove through the rainforest of the Otways, according to Simon this was the most southern rainforest. In a place called Colac we had a little break, Simon had to fill up the bus with gas and he couldn’t do that with us in it, so we had to get out and get some coffee or something.
Simon told us to keep our eyes open for koala’s and kangaroos and when he yelled out that he saw a kangaroo, it turned out to be a sign saying we had to watch out, because they might cross the road!! Hahah
We passed the 12 Apostles and the Loch Ard Gorge, but because it was very busy we didn’t stop there, we would do that first thing the next morning. Which we all agreed with! Simon took us to a lookout for a rock called Baker’s Oven, on our way there some stupid tourist tried to turn around!! Not that he was very quick about it, when he saw us coming, he stopped in the middle of the road instead of putting his foot on the gas to get the hell out of the way!! Idiot!!!!
They call this rock the Baker’s Oven, because there’s a hole in it, that makes it look like one. But then you could also call it a pizza oven, but what’s in a name anyway! It doesn’t matter what the name is, it was really just beautiful!
A couple of minutes more on the road and we were in Port Campbell, where we checked into a hostel. It’s not a really big city, kind of like Bridport, it will only get really busy in the summer! I was going to share a room with two other people from our group and I hoped it would stay that way, but unfortunately all the beds were occupied and they even put an extra bed in the room.
Anyway, Simon got himself busy in the kitchen and I walked around Port Campbell for a while. I got some postcards and wrote them over a cup of tea at a bar in the main street. Around 8pm dinner was ready and he had really outdone himself!! He had made lamb out of the oven, with grilled vegetables and baked potatoes, this was a big step up from the frozen pizzas we were expecting!!! The plates were cleared at the end of the evening! All he asked us to do was clean the plates, he had already cleaned the kitchen. That was a reasonable thing to do after all he had done for us!
I was sitting with a couple of people from the UK and someone from the Netherlands, who didn’t realize I was from the Netherlands also, until someone asked me where I was from. I have that effect on people! We talked about our day, what we had done in Australia before we came on this trip and we played some card game, which I have forgotten the name of. But it was a lot of fun!
Around 10pm I said goodnight, it had been a long day. Thinking I was the first one to go to bed, but it turned out that I wasn’t. So I couldn’t really pack up all of my stuff, like I had planned to do. I didn’t sleep all that much, different noises, new bed and all.
Monday morning we were going to leave the hostel around 8:15am, I had set my alarm, but I was up way before it went off. Everyone was still sleeping, so I just got up to get dressed. When I was done with that, I went downstairs for breakfast. And Simon had put some stuff out for us to make sandwiches for lunch that afternoon. After breakfast, around 7:30am, I thought everyone would be up, so I could pack up my stuff. But the other people were not from our group and didn’t have to get up early, so they were still sleeping. I got a little ticked off about this, so I’m afraid I wasn’t as quiet as I would have been otherwise….
So as I said we were to leave around 8:15am, but the Italian lady decided to go to the bathroom, so we had to wait for her.
Our first stop today was the Loch Ard Gorge, which was a beautiful place!! We could climb down a stairs to get down onto a beach, full of sand of course and also my shoes when I came back up! Yuk, I really don’t like sand in my shoes!! The story goes that in the years of settlement a ship was wrecked off the gorge and two survivors went into it and one of them climbed out to get help. Looking at the ocean outside of the gorge it was not hard to imagine that ships would go down there! Water coming out of the gorge tore into the water that wanted to go into the gorge, it is always amazing to look at the violence of the ocean!!
Again we had to wait for the Italian lady to come back, she decided to go down some path which Simon had told us not to do, because it would take too long…her English wasn’t all that good, I don’t think she got half of what Simon told us!
Our next stop was the 12 Apostles!! Simon had already told us about a scenic helicopter flight we could do over the apostles and this morning I had decided to go for it!!!! I had asked Simon if we would still have time to walk down to the apostles after the helicopter flight, because I kind of wanted to do both and he said there was time afterwards.
First he dropped off the people going on the flight, which of course the Italian lady didn’t get, because she wanted to get off too, but she wasn’t going to do the flight….
Anyway, there were 6 of us. We got a little yellow pouch around our waists, our life jackets and a little explanation about how to use it. Kind of like the ones you get when you go on the big planes. I guess you will not have enough time to get the life jacket from under the seat when something goes wrong, a lot closer to the ground than big air planes!
So the 6 of us got divided into 2 groups, which was good, because now we could all sit by a window to look out! The other group went up first and when I saw the helicopter go up, I told the guy in our group, he could have the seat next to the pilot!!!! The tail went up first, man, no way was I going to sit in the front seat to look at that.
Unfortunately we had to wait for the other group to come back, there were only 2 helicopters and the other went out for a longer flight. I was in the seat behind the pilot and our take off was a lot smoother than the other groups!! I have never been on a helicopter before, so I did take a pill before going up. Didn’t want to have any surprises while we were in the air. But this was great!!! It wasn’t a very long flight, but it went smoother than some of the flights I have had these past weeks!! Even the turns didn’t bother me!! Ok because of the rotors there’s a vibration in the helicopter throughout the flight, but that wasn’t all that bad.
It was amazing!!! We went all the way back to the Bakers Oven rock, we saw the gorge from the air and the 12 Apostles of course! The pilot told us that originally there were 8 rocks and one crumbled so now there are 7….but Simon had told us there were 9 originally and now there are 8…well, the only thing we know for sure is that there were never 12 as in the apostles, they only call them that…
We were supposed to leave around 10:15am and we were back on the ground around 10am…the walk to the apostles took about 30 minutes, return trip, so there was no time to go out there to look at them. Which I really didn’t like…but then there would have been a lot of sand down there, so at least I didn’t get any of that in my shoes!! But with the Italian lady late all the time and because we had to wait for the other group to come back with the helicopter…o well, like I said no sand in my shoes wasn’t all that bad!
When we were all back on the bus we had to make a little detour back to the hostel, someone had forgotten to take his beer from the fridge!! When the guy got his beer, we headed down to the rock known as London Bridge. This piece of rock used to be attached to land, but I think it was in 1990, the piece that was attached to the land crumbled to the see, so now it is just a solitary rock. So I guess the song “London bridge is falling down” came in handy here!! It is amazing to see! And when you see the force of the waves, you can imagine rock crumbling to the sea at last. It kind of looks like the Bakers Oven rock, but then the hole here is bigger.
The last stop on the GOR was the lookout for the Bay of Islands or the Bay of Martyrs. Why it has two names, Simon couldn’t really tell us. Anyway, it is a group of rocks along the road and again the view was amazing!! After looking at all of these sights and seeing all of these amazing views, I hope that the veterans that made this road could at least enjoy this view also.
Simon had to go shopping again for dinner that evening and he did so in Warrnambool, the last city for the GOR. We stopped at a shopping mall, where we could go out and do some shopping of our own. It may not have been the best place to spend an hour, but Simon had to get his groceries somewhere. Of course our cranky Italian lady had to comment on this, she didn’t come on this trip to go shopping, she wanted to see kangaroos and koala’s…as if Simon could summon them for her and we still did like to eat!! Stupid cow!
The hour was gone before we knew it and Simon had done his best again, a whole cartload full of stuff!!! After the shopping we went to the Tower Hill, an extinct volcano, where we were going to have lunch. Simon told us to keep an eye out for koala’s and one member of our group actually spotted one. So Simon stopped the bus and everyone jumped off, I think the cranky Italian lady was the first one the be at the tree!! At first I didn’t want to go, I wanted everyone to just leave it alone, but how many times would I get to see a koala in the wild?! So I went out also. But I just took a picture and went back into the bus. The Italian lady was standing too close to the tree of course…
Before we got off of the bus Simon warned us about the roaming emu’s that were there. They liked to snatch the sandwiches out of people’s hands if they got the chance, so we had to keep an eye on them. Now I don’t like birds, especially not the kinds that hover around me with those beady little eyes!!
He also told us that after lunch we could walk around if we wanted to and see if we could find any snakes. Now I don’t really like snakes either, I think some in our group did find them, but I didn’t go out to look for them.
Before we left me and a German guy from our group took some of our garbage to a bin I had seen near the toilets. As we walked back to the bus we saw some people standing underneath a tree, so we went over to take a look. And sure enough, there was another koala sleeping there!! Of course I didn’t have my camera with me at that time….anyway, it was sleeping soundly, had all four of it’s paws in a good grip on the tree!!
We decided not to tell the others, otherwise the poor thing would have been woken up by 24 strangers with camera’s!
After lunch we had a good ways to go to the Grampians, where we were going to spend the night in a lodge. In Dunkeld we took a short break and as we were driving through a place called Halls Gap, Simon noticed his tank was almost empty, so it would be a good time to fill it up. So we had another little break here, I bought some postcards and some apple pie ice cream!
When Simon was ready and we were about to drive to Reid’s Lookout, someone in our group spotted a kangaroo…you will not believe the speed with which our cranky Italian lady got off of the bus, once Simon parked it!
There was a female kangaroo with a joey in it’s pouch and later a male kangaroo arrived with a younger kangaroo. They must have been accustomed to people, because they didn’t run away, while again I think they were getting too close to the poor animal. And Simon gave it potato chips, which I also think wasn’t a good idea.
Anyway, when everyone had taken enough pictures and had gotten back on the bus, we really went to the lookout. Along the way we spotted another group of kangaroos and the Italian lady practically ordered Simon to stop the bus, but he either didn’t hear her or he didn’t want to hear her, because we kept on driving. Besides we’re not going to chase wild animals, hence the word wild!!! Stupid cow!! I think she must have been from the Italian country side and has never been outside of that village before now!! I mean really!
According to Simon this view should be listed in our top 3 of best views ever seen in our lives…and ok, it really was beautiful!!! We spend some time staring ahead of us, before driving on to the lodge. It had rained a little, so on our way down we saw a big rainbow!
So we were making our way through the Grampians, named by a Major Mitchell, after the Grampians he had seen in Scotland. He thought they looked alike….very original! Goes to show you where names will come from really, there was a mountain which he had named Asses Ears, because he thought it looked like the mountain on St. Helena…and he named another mountain Mt. Zero, because when he went to bed it was very hot, but by the time he woke up the temperature had dropped considerably….
Anyway, we were going to stay at the Asses Ears Wilderness Lodge, which had cabins, camping grounds and an airfield. Some people in our group were going camping, so they had to put up the tents when we got there. We thought it was going to rain, but they were lucky, nothing happened!!
I had cabin nr. 7,which I shared with one other woman and 2 men from our group. It was very hot in the cabin and we wanted to turn on the airconditioning, but there was only warm air coming out…it turned out to be a heater. So we left the door and the windows open to get some air. When I had dropped my stuff, I went over to the kitchen to see if I could help Simon out with his cooking. We were running a little late, so I thought I could help him chop some veggies. The woman that was staying my cabin was also there and together we chopped tomatoes, cucumbers and garlic. Which Simon turned into chicken from the oven, several salads with couscous and prawns. It all looked very good and tasted great.
There were also a couple of dogs at the lodge, sheep dogs. One of them walked with me and Emma out to the airfield, to see if we could spot some kangaroos. And we did see some! I caught one on my camera, but the rest ran off as soon as they saw us coming!! The dog started limping at one point and it turned out that he had some of the prickly plant in his paw. I had just gotten rid of those from my socks, so I kind of knew what I was looking for! He let me take it out and he continued walking.
While we were having dinner there was also a beautiful sunset, which I got to take pictures of! After dinner we cleaned up the plates he had used, we all ate off of plastic plates, so there wasn’t all that much to clean up today. And Simon got us to throw his boomerang around for a while. But I’m not very good at it, stupid thing won’t come back!
When it got dark we sat in the bar where there was a huge couch and we watched some tv. Now before we got to the lodge, Simon told us that we should all have a wingman, because the owner of the lodge liked to chat…big time! So whenever we saw the owner talking to someone and especially Simon, we were to jump in and tell him we needed his help for something! I don’t know if it worked, maybe he wasn’t all that talkative tonight, but I didn’t see anyone get caught by him!
Some played pool and I talked to another person from the group I hadn’t talked to yet. Around 11pm I was done for the day and I wanted to walk back to the cabin. I had brought my flashlight, thinking ahead that it might be very dark…and it was!!! I took the woman I had been talking to with me, because she also wanted to go, but didn’t have a flashlight. It was hilarious walking around in the dark like that, trying to find our own cabin! But we found it!
Now this dark, was a real dark. But when you looked up to the sky there were a million stars!!! The night was soo clear you could see them all and the Milky Way and they looked to be so close you could grab them, it was really amazing!!!!
So we had left the door of the cabin open all day, the night had turned cooler, but not as cool as to need the heater during the night. Only thing was while leaving the door open, it invited not only the fresh air to come in, but animals to come in too. And you know I mean insects!! We had to get rid of a moth! I thought it would stay near the ceiling, but as I was about to get ready to get into bed, it came down onto my bed and I definitely don’t like that to happen while I’m sleeping!!!!
The cabin had bunkbeds, I think the owner had made them himself, because they were of sturdy wood and the setup was a bit strange. My bunkbed was against the far wall, with another bunkbed placed at an angle at the foot of mine. Besides this was the stairs to get up onto the top bunk of my bunkbed…which didn’t give me a lot of space to get into the bottom bunk…plus all of the beds made considerable noise!
One of the guys had one of the top bunks and as soon as he had hauled himself up into the bed, I knew we were going to be in trouble! I was panting and breathing from the effort of climbing in and as I had foreseen, he started snoring as soon as he was asleep!!!! Great!!!
About 10 minutes after that I had to climb out of bed to get some mosquito spray on, because there was one nagging me already! I guess it really worked, because I didn’t hear anything after that and I didn’t have any bites on my arms and legs! Then later that night, one of the girls from our group came into the came with her flashlight, to get her phone back…she was one of the group that were camping and she had plugged it in to charge here…Why couldn’t she just wait until the next day to get it back instead of waking us all up in the middle of the night???
We weren’t about to leave very early that morning, but I got up early anyway. With all the snoring and noise from getting in and out of bed, there wasn’t much sleep to be had anyway. I got up and got dressed and I went to have some breakfast. I also put yesterday’s pictures on my usb stick, otherwise I would really get confused!!
We were supposed to leave at a quarter to 9, but of course it didn’t work out that way. Some people were going back to Melbourne with Simon, so these suitcases had to get into the trailer first. But people just left their stuff outside the trailer, thinking it would get in there by itself. So I started loading the thing up, when someone said I should let the guys handle that…but there wasn’t one about and like I said the bags weren’t going in there by themselves.
So by the time we were ready to go, the owner came to say goodbye, so it took another 10 minutes before we actually left. One of the sheepdogs was herding us off of the property is what Simon said…I think the dog was just happy to be chasing the bus!
The cranky Italian lady was even more cranky this morning. The day before I had taken the seat by the window, because I didn’t want to stand there waiting for her to finally hop on board in the morning. But at the end of the day I couldn’t feel my knees anymore, so when she indicated that I could have that seat again, I told her that she could have it, I wasn’t going to sit there anymore. She was a lot smaller then I was and she had plenty of space for her legs. I don’t think she was very happy with this arrangement! But I really didn’t give a shit!
We were supposed to go for a 40 minute walk to a waterfall, but a fallen tree had blocked to road, so we couldn’t go there. Which didn’t bother me, because it was already very hot and the prospect of walking in that heat for 40 minutes, didn’t really appeal to me. But we went to another point from where we could walk to the falls and that was only 20 minutes…first going down and then of course we had to go back up again…
We walked to McKenzies falls and it was amazing!!!! Ok yes, my knees didn’t really appreciate the walk down, it had an incline and there were some steps. But to see the falls was just great, really it was almost a hidden jem. And it was certainly more of a waterfall then the one I tried to find at the Blue Mountains near Sydney!!! Walking back I took my time and drank a lot of water! It was too hot to run back to the bus!
Our next stop was the Boroka Lookout, which according to Simon should rank in the top 4 of best views ever seen…but he was wrong on this one! Really this view shouldn’t be on any list really! It wasn’t as good as the one we had seen yesterday, or the ones I have seen in other countries.
Then we drove back to Halls Gap, where we had seen the kangaroos the day before, who wisely stayed away this morning! We went to the Bambruk Cultural Center, which told us about the flora and fauna found in the Grampians, but also about the Aboriginal culture. Simon has had the privilege of living among a couple of tribes to learn their language and he is very passionate about them, can’t believe all of the things that he had been taught in school about them, because it was all so wrong.
Seeing as how passionate he was and how much he wanted us to get to know this culture too, we didn’t get a whole lot of time to actually get into it. He also told us to try one of the emu or kangaroo pie here, but that took some time to make, so we didn’t leave on time unfortunately. I had bought a kangaroo pie and it was really good…it would have been better if I had had time to eat it properly…now I had to eat it while we were driving and of course I couldn’t use a knife and fork...Note to self: never eat a pie while sitting on a moving bus!!
This was our last stop of the tour, we drove on to Horsham, where the people who would go onto Adelaide would get off of this bus. But before we got there, Simon had one more stop to make. You know how the US has these Giant….whatever you can think of things?! Well, Australia has them too! He stopped at the Giant Koala, where we took a group picture!!!!
Now I don’t know if the cranky Italian lady really didn’t get it or that she was deliberately walking the other way, but she could see us all going over to the koala and standing together for a picture. But she wasn’t in it and no one really cared to ask her to join us!
We were in Horsham around 1:30pm, where I among others got off of Simons bus, ready to take a greyhound sort of bus on to Adelaide. Simon gave us our tickets and a hug and then he was off back to Melbourne.
I went over to a bakery with the couple from the UK and we had a small lunch there. As we were eating we were talking about the tour, the group of people and the fact that I was sitting next to the cranky Italian lady the whole trip. I told them about the fact that I had seen a second koala at Tower Hill and didn’t tell anyone. Then Victoria told me about what had happened that afternoon.
Turned out they had seen the same koala some time before me. She was standing there watching it, when the Italian lady was banging a stick at the tree where the koala was sleeping in. So Victoria, being very passionate about animals, asked her kindly to stop doing that. Victoria said she completely ignored her and threw the stick at the tree…upon which Victoria asked her in a slightly less friendly manner if she could stop doing that. Victoria said she had picked up another stick and was aiming it at the tree, but Victoria grabbed her arm and told her in her face that is she was going to throw that stick, she would be in a lot of trouble!!!! Victoria said she had become so angry she had to walk away, or she would have seriously hit her over the head with that stick!! Later she told Simon about what had happened, not to cause any trouble, but just so he knew about it too. He really didn’t mind, but he called his office right away to tell them about this lady, in case she starts complaining about either him or Victoria.
Unbelievable, like I said she must have been from the country! Why on earth would you want to throw a stick at a sleeping animal up in a tree??? There was one other Italian on board and even he thought she was nuts! Really, I told Victoria that it was a shame I didn’t know about this before, or I would have never sat down next to her again!!
Around a quarter past 2 we got on the bigger bus and I was lucky that the seat beside me was empty, it was very busy! The first couple of hours the scenery didn’t change at all, it was flat and yellow. But amazing clouds though!! In Tintaranga we had a half an hour break and then we realized the time changed again. We were supposed to be in Adelaide around 7:30pm, but that was Melbourne time, in Adelaide it was half an hour later! Don’t you just love all of these different states!!!
The busstation was really close to the YHA, which was very nice. A couple of other women from the group were also staying there, so we all walked over there together. As soon as I was checked in, I dumped my stuff and I went out to find something to eat with Emma, from the UK.
I will write my Adelaide adventures on a new page, I see this one story has already gotten up to 12 pages….I had a lot of fun on this tour, I’m glad I did it! I have seen some amazing things, done an amazing thing and I’ve met some very nice people…not counting the cranky Italian lady of course!!!
Love
Linda
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Je kunt nu ook Smileys gebruiken. Via de toolbar, toetsenbord of door eerst : te typen en dan een woord bijvoorbeeld :smiley
