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!

A wild [insert name of potentially lethal animal here] appears!!

So, anyone who knows me will also know that I am scared of just about everything that life throws at me. Being in Australia has not helped this fact, since all of the wildlife is absurdly different to the way it is back home. Don't get me wrong, some of it is beautiful and amazing, but, as predicted, I am constantly terrified of everything around me.

I'll start with some of the nice stuff. For example, the birds here are beautiful! There are wild parrots all over the place, and each one seems to have a different, but equally amazing pattern. What with Wollongong being a seaside town, there are obviously seagulls, but their beaks and legs seem to be much more of a vibrant red colour than the ones back home. There are even a few pelacans who swim around the harbour on a regular basis (pretty much all the time, I see them every time I'm there). Even the ducks look different (they have really thin necks, and really big heads... I always think it looks like the head should fall off).

No matter what they look like, the birds seem to have confidence in excess. It takes a lot to make some of them fly away. The parrots are pretty playful and just fly around you (or maybe that's just me..?). There are cockatoos everywhere, and one of them even came and landed on my balcony while I was studying out there one time (I almost pooped my pants). They're a lot bigger close up, and it looked angry so I gave it an orange but it wouldn't go away. I resorted to shouting at it through the fly guard so that it couldn't get me.

The cockatoo that landed on my balcony and scared me so much

It's spring over in Australia at the moment, which of course means that all of the chicks are hatching. There are a few families of ducks that live on campus, and there are road signs to tell drivers to watch out for crossing ducklings. The parent ducks can actually be pretty hostile (I've had one hiss and charge at me as I walked past). Apparently a big thing over here is the danger of swooping magpies. I've been told that if you walk under a tree that has a magpie nest in it, then mama magpie will swoop down at you and try to peck your eyes out! There was a warning email telling us to avoid a certain part of campus that magpies are known to nest in, and I've not quite mustered up the courage to walk past there yet. There is a wikipedia article which makes the whole affair sound terrifying ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Magpie ) and the magpies are huge over here, so I don't think I'll be taking my chances any time soon.

Recently there has been a chicken wondering around the uni campus and around our accommodation. No one knows where it came from, and one day I wasn't concentrating on where I was going and ran into it at the top of my stairwell. I was so shocked when I saw it that I actually yelled (it probably sounded something like "ARRRGHHGHHAAAAHHHWWOOOAAHHAH"). I had no idea what I should do with it, so eventually I went to get Tash who helped me shoo it down the stairs.

As for the aquatic life over here, I find it fascinating. One day, Charlie and I were walking through campus. She looked into one of the many ponds and just said "WHAT THE F*** IS THAT?!" When we went to look a little bit closer, we saw that there were dozens of eels in the water along with a heap of small fish. I remember being shocked that something which is so "exotic" to us could be in suck close proximity to us the whole time and we hadn't noticed. Another time, I was walking to class and noticed a tortoise on the side of the foot path. I sat there for about five minutes just watching it poke its head in and out of its shell, and was devastated when I realised that I'd forgotten my camera (not left the house without it since to avoid other similar happenings). And when Charlie, Amanda, Debs and I were checking out the rock pools on the beach, we saw some red lump and couldn't decide was it was, so of course we poked it with a stick to find that it was an octopus!! That was probably my favourite find of the trip so far! It's not all fun and games though, because as summer goes on, there is more and more likelihood of jellyfish being in the water. No one has ever died from the sting of a blue bottle jellyfish in Australia, but I've heard the sting hurts like hell.

I haven't seen many reptiles apart from small brown lizards while I've been here, I saw a pretty big one today though and managed to get a picture before it scurried away. Wherever I go though there are warning signs about brown snakes and black snakes and other assorted dangerous snakes. I'm kind of curious to see one, but would probably be petrified if I did.

I haven't really seen anything in terms of wild mammals apart from the possums that live around campus. The Australians hate them and consider them to be vermin, but I think they're adorable and stroke them whenever they come down. The cutest thing was that when we first arrived in the country, one of them had just had a baby, and would come down with the baby on its back. There are, of course, the kangaroos and koala bears over here, but we don't see much of them in Wollongong, and the only experience we've had with them are in zoos. We did see a few wild roos on the road trip, but not for very long.

So I've talked about birds, fish, reptiles and mammals, so it is inevitably time to talk about creepy crawlies. After all the scare stories I was told before I came here, I am VERY relieved to say that I have had very little contact with spiders of any kind. When I first got here, I would check under my duvet and under the toilet seat for any that might have been under there, but after about a month I realised that I was just being silly, and that doing these things was probably not necessary... A small spider did land on me the other day when I was taking a walk, and I didn't crap my pants when I saw it, so I'm probably getting closer to being over my phobia. 

There are some pretty crazy bug here though, for example, there was a green thing on the wall of our stairwell that didn't move for about a week, about the length of you average MP3 player. I always dodged around it, and one time I came close to poking it with a stick, but I couldn't bring myself to do it, and I was scared that it would eat me (obviously an irrational fear because it obviously wouldn't have eaten me...), and then one day it just wasn't there anymore.

When we were in Nimbin, us Europeans had our first experience with fireflies. They looked so beautiful as they danced around the forest. Hamish even managed to catch one so that we could have a look at one up close, and seeing its back end light up like that was just bizarre. There are also lots of dragonflies around the Gong. I've seen them before in England, but not as big as these ones, and the other day I was lucky enough to find one that was just sitting on a flower, resting. It didn't seem too bothered that I was coming closer, and it sat there and posed for about five minutes while I took photos of it. Then of course there are the many multitudes of different bees, moths, butterflies, ants (I saw a massive flying ant land on my window and start chowing down on a bug it had caught which was about the same size as it), and other mini monsters that live around Australia, but I'll write some more about them once I've seen a little more of them.

In other news, I finally decided where I'm going to WWOOF! I'm going to live in the "Earthship" for a week and help make the final touches and help out with the farm animals. Below is a link to their website, and if you get a chance you should look around it and have a read of what they're all about, because I found it really interesting.

http://homepages.callplus.net.nz/~b.gubb/

I can't wait for uni to be over, and for the three month break to get here. Plans so far are to go to NZ from 20th Nov, work on that farm for a week, meet up with the Norwegians/whoever else is there at the time to explore the country for the remainder of my three weeks there, fly back to Melbourne on 20th Dec, be in Albury for Christmas (at Flic's house) and in Sydney for New Year's Eve! From there I'm not quite sure what I'm doing, but I'm sure I'll figure it out :)