Adelaide to Melbourne

On our way to Melbourne, we decided to take our time and drive along the scenic route. When we were with Marion she told us to go and see the Murray Bridge. Apparently it's spectacular and the water is super clear. I had my suspicions though, since when we were in Wakerie, the water had a distinct brown hue. Sure enough, when we were crossing the bridge the water was muddy brown, and the bridge wasn't even that impressive, it was just a bit long...

We drove along the coast through the Coorong National Park where there were lots of big birds, most of which we could identify thanks to the birds of prey show on Kangaroo Island (I do wonder if we would have even noticed them at all if we hadn't been to that show?). The highlight was seeing a bird trying to take off but being swept aside by the very strong wind, it was like something from a cartoon. We stopped for the night in a small town called Kingston SE, where we rummaged through the Aldi bins to find flavoured rice and spicy biscuits, walked along the very long pier, and played cards on our new camping chairs.

The next day we drove to Mount Gambier, which is an extinct volcano with a very blue lake in its crater (the blue lakes I saw in NZ were much more spectacular in my opinion, but Matt and Amanda seemed to be impressed). After this we drove over from South Australia to Victoria. At the state border, there was a sign that read: "DANGER! Do not bring any potatoes or potato farming equipment into Victoria!" I really didn't know what to make of it, and decided that it would be best not to tell anyone about all the dirty potato farming equipment that we had in the back.

We stayed the night in a very windy town called Portland. There wasn't exactly a buzzing night scene in Portland. We couldn't even find anywhere to get a coffee past 6pm, so we spent our evening watching Beyonce videos in McDonald's until they started cleaning up around us, at which point we went to KFC where we got free cups of tea because the tea machine was broken (best thing that could ever happen to three English travellers).

Next stop was a small town called Port Fairy, which had a lovely little cove with rock pools FULL of starfish, and an island with picturesque beaches and a lighthouse. We stayed here for a while before moving on to Tower Hill (with some minor driving drama in between that involved Amanda doing a U-turn on a highway and Matt being very stressed, while I was in the back, cool as a cucumber, not really paying much attention). Tower Hill is actually a series of craters from another old volcano, we climbed to the top to see a quite frankly boring and beige coloured landscape - the same view that we'd had for the majority of the drive, but from higher up.

Amanda looking at the bleak view from atop Tower Hill

Soon after Tower Hill we were finally onto the Great Ocean Road (after Amanda and I had visited Cheese World and got a lot of free cheese tasters of course). I'm not going to lie, for me the first half of the great ocean road wasn't all that I'd expected. The roads were pretty straight and it was littered with rock formations like caves, arches and stacks, and I feel like because I learnt how they were formed in school, it now takes a lot for one to impress me - there were, however, some beautiful beaches and there was a pretty cracking sunset at the end of the day. I would also like to point out that just before dinner, Matt and Amanda revealed their skills as bird charmers and literally had birds eating out of the palms of their hands. It was very surreal for me to watch, and very disappointing when I discovered that I was not some kind of bird whisperer too...

The following morning, the "great ocean road" took us away from the ocean and into a rainforest. This is where the drive got interesting with winding roads and steep hills, though Matt and I both thought that the drive would have been much better if the van had a manual gear box. We saw a sign for a lighthouse, so thought we'd check it out. It turns out that it was a ridiculous amount of money to go and see it so we didn't bother, but it was SO, SO, SO worth taking that turn because we had our first close encounter with wild koalas! There were about eight koalas in this one tree, and one of them was about half a metre away from me when I stretched my arm out towards it! I could have stayed there watching it not do anything (all they do is eat and sleep) for hours, but alas we moved on - if we hadn't we wouldn't have seen the unsuccessful attempt of a man llama trying to mount a lady llama next to a goat that thought it was a llama. Poor little guy.

After this, we stopped for lunch in a small beach town called Apollo bay, which had warm water but the sea was full of seaweed which made swimming difficult and unpleasant. From here, the view from the road really was amazing. The sky was bright blue, the ocean was even bluer, and it was right next to the meandering road. It was great fun to drive, going slightly too fast around the corners to see what the van could do (but mum and dad if you're reading this, I slowed right down, almost to a stop, for every corner). This brought us to the end of the great ocean road, and a couple of hours later we were in Melbourne!