We went out of our way to do this – as felt we couldn’t leave australia without feeling we’d missed out on something if we didn’t, so a few phonecalls later, and a bit of money…. it was all sorted!!! A few days more in Australia, and a few days off New Zealand which shouldn’t be missed as had allowed a lot of time there!
We flew from Sydney to Melbourne, and arrived in our super unorganised fashion! Hunted out some rental car companies, got a good selection of quotes…. decided they were all too expensive haha and then found hertz! Was served by a VERY VERY helpful woman, who’d travelled around england herself, and gave us all the quotes. For an under 25 driver to be added it added $100, and she must have seen HOW much Clare’s face fell and spent the next 20 minutes REALLY trying to make it cheaper for Clare to still be a driver. She found the best discount code (which we weren’t eligible for) and sneaked it onto our rental, and we found ourselves both happy named drivers with full insurance for a really good price! The lovely Ford Focus (see pic!!) pulled up, a nice metallic shade of grey! And was amazing to drive! (and had some serious umph!) So anyway enough about the car hire!
We headed straight out of Melbourne towards the Great Ocean Road, stopping at the first town on it, Torquay, known for its surfing (original ey!) and where 2 of the flagship surf shops were, which sold nice dresses..… We toured around the beaches, watching the surfers, and then along the main road that clung to the cliff, WHAT a road!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We stopped about every 100m, LITERALLY haha, the journey taking at least double the expected amount of time! Hard to describe HOW impressed we both were, the road was carved out of the cliff and mountain, often with deadly vertical drops alongside, but along a stunning coastline followed it, it really lived up to its name and we loved every second of it. (especially clare who LOVED the driving!!!!!!) Ps Antony – note the picture just for you! We stayed in Lorne, a pretty seaside village, where we’d booked through last minute as the hostel in the town was full, but got for only a few more dollars. It was sooo nice staying somewhere nice, BIG fluffy pillows, a bath! A HAIRDRYER!! free tea! And a really comfy bed! It was all well appreciated!! We treated ourselves to fish and chips – from a really nice little shop with a really friendly owner, and as we were the last customers (it closed at 8!) we got extra free food! Had a yum dinner in front of nemo spotting all the fish we’d seen once diving!!
We left the next morning, (clare still with a cold… so with lemsip in tow… see pic!) sent our second parcel home! (will arrive another 2-3 months later!) and continued the drive, again loving every second of it. Had a lot of really good weather with lots of sun, and stopped with a view to write our postcards home (see pic!) but the closer to the 12 apostles we got, the more the cloud set in, which turned into rain haha was still an amazing drive, and the road took us through the national parks, deep forest and back along the coast. It was amazing seeing such a world famous sight such as the 12 apostles, one of the big highlights of the drive, but to be honest, it was FREEZING and SERIOUSLY windy!!!!!! So the amazingness of them wore off quite quickly haha. we were staying in a town of about 4 houses, a pub and a post office, it was clare’s mums birthday that evening and so drove into the nearest larger town to find somewhere that had internet, that stayed open after 9pm! This was a lot harder than it sounds and the best we got was finding somewhere that had wireless that we could pay for and then sit outside the building in the car later that evening! Thankfully the plan worked and Clare got to call home. We had another fish and chips dinner gluttons for punishment though we had dinner and headed back out to the site to watch ‘sunset’ HAHA it was still seriously cloudy, and even windier, so we pretty much just watched it get dark, while James froze! Tucked up in bed later under 2 blankets it was all better!
We then drove back to Melbourne airport for our flight in the evening, via the apple store in the city haha where we were super lucky with a very helpful guy who somehow wangled a way to swap our slightly incorrectly manufactured mac for a nice shiny one! That was perfect :) we were very lucky, especially as in Missions beach we’d had a deet ‘incident’ which had resulted to a good amount of the high gloss turning mat with our fingerprints embedded haha anyway a nice happy shiny mac later and we were back at the airport, returning the car. Something clare was deeply unhappy about and if clinging onto it would of meant she would of kept it, she’d never have let go!
Had another ontime flight with Tiger airlines! And proceeded to Sydney where we’d spend the night in the airport waiting for our early morning flight to NZ…..
A lot more pics will be added when we’re somewhere a little less remote!
All in all we have absolutly loved almost every second of Australia – our highlights are easy to pick out – the Great Barrier Reef trip from Cairns the Whitsunday Islands trip, and the Great Ocean Road. Those are already looked at with seriously fond memories and would love to do all over again!! We’re another couple of books through, I’ve finished the Twilight Saga and James is working his way through the last one, thankfully only 1 bout of sickness here on my side, and even that didn’t ruin the day!! Bus journeys exceeded our expectations – caught up on a couple of films, saved some nights accommodation money and got to stop and chill for a couple of hours on them at least! For a country we weren’t going to come to and only added it in seeing as we were so close we definitely loved it more than we could have imagined. And left with a great tan.
Pictures of the Great Ocean Road can be found here!
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