The Great Ocean Road

Soo I forgot to mention in the last blog that I was terrified of driving in Melbourne, it's a massive place and they have trams and it's foreign despite being on the 'right' side and everything...So I should thank Seb most gratefully for directing me from the Airport and also out of Melbourne as well the next day etc etc entirely managing to avoid me having to do any Hook turns...I know you should do things that scare you but, well, this one I just chose to avoid!

So we left around 9am on the Tuesday morning heading out of Melbourne, avoiding all Hook turns! It takes a long time to drive round Melbourne and out of it all the way down to the coast/Geelong etc, about an hour/hour and a half...then we eventually got to Torquay, the first stop...beach didn't look so impressive, I remember being quite impressed the first time I saw it..but maybe Winter and whatever..we didn't stay for long, then we drove on and on and on...the actual Ocean part of the Great Ocean road takes a while to come about, but eventually it does.

The Great Ocean Road was built after the first world war to keep all the war veterans busy and distracted from all the horror they'd seen etc.

It's strange driving in Australia, I don't know quite why, maybe it's the scenery, but driving for nine hours with the occassional stops etc is not that tiring. I've driven in Australia before and found that to the be case too, very odd. Reckon I'd be broken driving for nine hours in the UK...and I'd have done pretty much the whole length of the country rather than a tiny tiny fraction of it!

We also, of course, saw Koalas, Megan was super enthusiastically keeping an eye out for the Koalas and anything living in the trees as we drove by so spotted I think maybe all of them pretty much! Probably due to the winter they were all quite active, maybe in the Summer it's too warm (someone was suggesting this to me last night) so they just go to sleep and keep still to keep cool.

We did a few little detours and stops along the way for photos and quick stretches of legs. Had fish and chips I think in Lorne too...then drove on quite quck the last part to catch sunset at the Twelve Apostles, some massive rocks in the middle of the sea, parts of the coast that's worn away over years and every now and then one of the rocks fall down, so there's not quite 12. When I last saw them in 2005 there was definitely at least one more too... 

After the sun goes down on Twelve apostles ...you can wait about half an hour and you'll see 'Little Penguins' to fall out of the sea, they sort of fall in with the waves and then fall over and wait for each other and then wobble up the beach to their little beds for the nights, cute, sort of, or well, it probably is, it's just it's really dark and all you can see is this tiny blob, because you're so far away from them.

We stayed in Warnambool as we'd hoped to see Whales, think it's the Southern Right Whales? We stayed at the Warnambool beach backpackers, 17 Stanley street. It was fine, but extremely empty and we were in the sort of outhouse type part of the building, meaning it was freezing in the corridor. We searched around a bit for food, nothing seemed to be quite right, we ended up eating at a Thai restaurant which was fine.

The next morn we got up early and left to find breakfast, we wanted somewhere interesting but ended up settling for a Subway because the other options just weren't that good. Then so, we had hoped to see Whales in Warnambool but apparently so far none had been sighted, but they had been sighted an hour and a half down the road in portland...so, I'd already driven this far, why not give it a go...so we did, and also called in on Tower Hill reserve on the way which was very cool, big valley and you drive over cattle grids to get in and out of it. It was quite a gloomy day so we totally chose the right day for driving along the Great Ocean Road the day before. I'd hoped to see sugar gliders, but they are nocturnal and yep, apparently rarely sighted, boo. We did see Emus though and Meg saw her first Roo in Oz too! Then we drove on to Portland and did see the occassional flip of a tail in the harbour, although at quite a distance and we were using binoculars. Was pretty cool. So satisfied with our findings we turned on back and drove ALLLLLLLLLLLL the way back to Melbourne, only with one little jolly stop off at the park to give me a rest.

Dave comes to visit for the weekend...popping in on his way back from Perth...

OK, so I fall behind again in updating this thing but manage to keep my paper diary up to date so I can vaguely figure it out. I gather people are reading it still so there's still just about justification in writing it, I hope...at least it will be nice for me to look back on it should I ever have the need, to remember what I got up to, reminisce and maybe figure out whether I want to come back out again for real...that idea does still seem very appealing, but I'm also getting excited for going back home now too, I've got so much planned before I start work in mid August too!

On Saturday the 12th of June, Seb, Michelle and I went to the Melbourne museum to go and see the Titanic exhibition, which was really good I thought. To get in though you had to queue up for your 'boarding time' as it's all very busy and sell out every weekend. So we booked our time slot and then went for breakfast to Southpaw for breakfasts like 'The Cat's Meow' I think. Good breafasts: http://www.southpawbar.com.au/

So then filled up with breakfast we headed off to the exhibition. You got your own boarding card of a real-life person aboard the Titanic. Really interesting exhibition, although exhausting, worth taking a look.

In the afternoon I headed on down to Southern Cross station to pick up my friend Dave! He had recently got a job and they'd flown him out to Perth to do some work there for a few days and he'd persuaded them to fly him back through Melbourne for a couple of days! Was so very lovely to see him, one of my friends that I've been missing the most whilst over here as I spend a lot of time with him and Jude and James in the UK and they're such fun and so sweet too. :-)

So Dave was taken back to the house and we had some pink sparkling stuff from my trip to the Yarra Valley a few weeks before. Then we went out to The Edinburgh Castle, Seb, Dave and I to listen to my work colleagues husband's band playing there. Not really been to Brunswick much, not so keen on it really, although if I was here longer I might try and invest a little more time in it. There's so many different areas in Melbourne it's quite difficult to get to know all the different areas so I've been inclined mostly really to focus on Fitzroy and the CBD I guess.

After that we headed on in to town to meet Michelle (Kate was sick sadly) at Cookie for dinner, I couldn't think of anywhere else to meet and Cookie: www.cookie.net.au/ sadly was a bit of a dissapointment...I guess it was a Saturday night but it was stuipid busy and we were put on a table where you have to go order everything at the bar and then they were daftly slow and it was just a bit of a painful process...not really a good welcome to Dave! So, then next we used the 'secret bars' cards I have and found 'Emerald Peacock', I liked this place, the downstairs didn't look as exciting as in the cards but it had a nice rooftop bar and did allreet Mojitos I think...

Then, although we could have stayed longer, we decided to try and squish a few in, so we headed to 1806, 169 Exhibition street. As with Emerald Peacock we walked straight past it initially, it's quite weird how the bars in Melbourne are that well hidden that you don't even seem to notice the bouncers on the door or a doorway with a sign that says the name of the bar above it, don't know how or why that happens! 1806 is apparently the year the word cocktails was first defined in print! This place: http://www.1806.com.au/ has the longest menu in the world, I'm not sure they've got in to the Guinness book of records for that, but they should have, it was quite boring really and explained every drink in great detail, nice idea, but boring. It didn't feel like it had much life beyond being a sort of history to alcoholic drinks and so we went for one bottle of wine between the four of us and headed off. The boys had vitoed a couple of the cards Michelle and I had chosen but then left Michelle to figure out the route and specified that a roof top bar would be nice...so we went to Madame Brussels which looked and sounded ace http://www.madamebrussels.com/ see!? The venue was fun with astro turf inside and out and sort of tennis garden/English garden furniture and the staff all in semi-tennis gear, lively sweet place and we stayed in it quite some considering the boys weren't so keen on it, and started drinking absinthe in protest...after that we had a go at going to the lovely Carlton club, but this evening apparently we had to be members...hmm. So we went for a final drink at Gin Palace again, where everyone looked a bit tired and in need of sleep...so we headed home!

The next day, Sunday. We had a go at a breakfast at Gluttony's, 278 Smith Street, bleeeeeeeugh, don't recommend, very greasy but not in a nice way, it was just too much. Was dissapointed to take Dave to a bad place, the huge majority of cafes and restaurants here are wonderful so not representative! I played with my food to make better use of it.

Then we went to meet Michelle in the Black Cat, my favourite and for food in a sweet Noodle place on Brunswick street but I haven't got a card I don't think for that one so how could I possibly tell you what it was called!? Good though it was and cheap and staff friendly too. I took Dave and Seb to Polly then and also for one at The Alchemist with it's fancy bizarre cocktails. I love Polly, the Alchemist is a bit not quite there maybe.

The following day I got up at the crack of a very cold dawn (OK maybe the sun had been up for a while but I wanted more sleep!) to go and pick Megan, my little sister, up from Southern Cross station. Was lovely to see her and I took her home for her to get showered and have a quick nap before going to an AFL game: Melbourne vs Collingwood, apparently 67,000 people had turned out to watch the Queen's birthday public hol weekend game. Cost us $44 each, not too bad. To those that don't know, they play on a massive oval pitch and it's like a cross between rugby and football/soccer (!) and they're a bit fighty with it and rough and the goals are weird scoring large numbered scoring systems, like in Rugby. The game's in quaters, so three breaks...so it takes a long time...but yep, on the whole it was pretty fun to watch, particularly the last quarter where it was quite tense, and then crazily the game ended with a draw, which apparently is very unsusual due to the weird scoring system! On the way to get there we also went to a cool fast food place 'Lord of the Fries' that Kate suggested for those that needed a bit of food. They were ace, just near Flinders street station.

Before Dave went we went for one last cocktail at The Carlton Club and then Dave, Seb and I caught a taxi to the Airport..Dave was heading home but I needed to go and pick up the car for our short road trip along the Great Ocean Road!