Day 1
We woke up today feeling reeeeally hungover. Friday night had gone from a quick glass of wine to a few more, snakebites and sambuca?? Brilliant night but not well thought through at all as we had to be up the next day to collect our camper van before they shut for the weekend. We dragged ourselves out of bed and headed to get some toast before climbing on the tram to get to the hire shop. We were so excited when we saw they had vegemite on toast...untill it came completley soaked in the stuff - yuk! Not good for a hangover booooo!
We made it back to Bev and Micks and checked out just in time to park the van and rush to the Neighbours tour we had booked. Seriousley was a close call the bus nearly went without us! eeeek!
The neighbours tour was great we got to see all the sets and even Ramsey street, people actually live on that street, they get paid to let people film, good ey.
We began to feel a little better as the day went on, but not much! ha!
We got back to the city, found the car and started our trip down the great ocean road. First stop was Geelong, on the way we saw a sign for "Lara" the town, wow we were amazed so took pictures of the signs for Lara. Then we decided we had a bit of spare time before we had to check in at the campsite so we took a detour to see the town of "Lara". We saw Lara town hall, Lara secondary school, Lara quality meats, Lara fruit and veg ( yes we have picture documentation of all of the above and more!) - very funny! We finally made it to Geelong ( being an hour late and having the poor receptionist have to stay an hour after her normal work hours to check us in ooopsy), did some shopping at the supermarket for camping food, back to the campsite for tea and crumpets :-) we giggled most of the night at how small our van is, very cosy - we like it!
Day 2
Day 2 was supposed to start out bright and early, we thought seeing as we were in a tiny van in a campsite we would wake to the noises around us and be uncomfortabel - wrong again! We slept so well and i woke up @ 11.45am, making Nat jump as we both realised what the time was - dammit! Luckily the clocks had gone back an hour as Aus are going into winter so we gained an hour back phew. We made our way from Geelong all the way to Port Campbell on Day 2. First stop was Bells beach. Here is the place where surferes love to cathc waves, the scenery was amazing. The waves were huge! We got some good pictures and spent quite a while just soaking up the atmosphere. Between Bells beach and Apollop Bay there are many viewing points which we stopped at too. We stopped at Cape Otway which is a famous lighthouse on the Great Ocean Road where many ships have been shipwrecked off the coast as a consequence of the crazy weather and aves they get here. Then stopping in Apollo bay, Nat filled us up with petrol and dowsed herself in it at the same time. The van only took $35 to fill up, compared to home that was so cheap she didnt believe the tank was full so kept pulling the trigger and it went all over her! We made our way to some waterfalls but when we got there it was an hours walk ans we realised the dark would catch us as the clocks had gone back so we thought better of it with the luck we have been having....ha! We then made our way through Otway national park for what seemed like hours, it was dark we were scared. Along the way we saw someone had broken down, we were in the middle of no where and there seemed to be about 3 other cars stopped too so we drove on. We finally made it to Port Campbell ( so relieved!), made a culinary delight of scrambled eggs, beans with some vegemite mixed in! To top iit off we had some cheap red wine in our plastic cups - classy chicks! It was so windy that night that it rocked the van and us to sleep!
Day 3
Once again we tried to get up early and hit the road but we managed to switch off the alarm...
Its lucky we had made good work the previous day! We stopped at the 12 Apostles, London Bridge, the grotto, tower hill and many more viewing lookouts, all pictures to follow. Today was really windy and we had our jumpers on for the first time since leaving England. We = not impressed! haha!
We had great fun, I pods on, singing along - we even gave ourselves sore throats ha! Then Nats dads song, My Way by Frank Sinatra came on so we started singing but relating it to our road trip on the Great Ocean Road, it was so good we decided to film it! Also lots of Westlife, Take That and Girls Aloud were sung today!
When we finally reached Port Fairy the coastline was a strange shape which also caused the waves to be more crazy - well so it seemed. We sat and watched them for ages, really relaxing.
Nat bought a DVD player in Vietnam so we set ourselves up on our campsite got all warm and watched a DVD with our cheap red and some chocolate, once again classy chicks!
Day 4
Today was to be our last full day and last night on a campsite before heading back to Bev and Micks.....wrong again!
We managed to get ourselves up, all organised, bright and early and set off back along the motorway to Melbourne. Our plan was to get back and stay in St Kilda, still in melbourne but on the coast.
We got back into the city around 3pm and decided it would be nice to go to the cinema for a change as the norm lately had been nothing of the sort. So we did, one thing we didnt think through was that the film wasnt to finish until 7pm.....a little too late to book into a camsite. I had however looked in our lonely planet to see there was only one site in St Kilda, so we headed to St Kilda knowing that it would be fine, we would drive onto the site and pay the next morning - WRONG! 2. 5 hours later and many stop offs to ask people where it was we still hadnt found it, we had managed to drive so far out of Melbourne it took us an hour to get back aqlong the motorway. So we finally made the decison to head back to Bev and Micks for the night. You can't just pull up on the side of the road with a van that has "Travellers Auto Barn" scrawled all over it as the police can arrest you for this and supposedly regulary drive the streets to catch people out.
When we walked back into Bev and Micks all the residents did laugh - they knew we wasnt supposed to be back until Wednesday and laughed at us haha! Oh well!
Day 5
So today we had to get up early to ensure we didnt get a parking ticket on the van - this wouldnt have been cool for school with our already bad luck. So we rolled out of bed, cleaned up and drove it back to the hire place. We were literally in our PJ's when they told us we had to wash the van - apparently its in the small print! agggggggggh! so we did and it was fine. All of the mistakes aside we really did have a brilliant time, the mistakes made it quite funny! We just had to laugh at ourselves and get on with it! So today is Wednesday 8th April and we leave Mebourne tommorrow to pick up our 3 day tour to Sydney arriving on Saturday 11th. Until then...........
