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!

Sitting, watching, waiting

The van wouldn't start, and we couldn't get anywhere. We were beginning to think that it was going to be a huge waste of money, but at least we had somewhere to stay. We were still with Marion in Adelaide, spending our days aimlessly wondering around the city, reading, watching movies, checking our emails, going to the zoo (Australia's only zoo to have a panda exhibit) - anything to keep us occupied. She even introduced us to the art of bin diving. Bin diving is when people rummage through supermarket bins at the end of the day to get food that is past its sell-by date, but before its use-by date, which I think is a great idea considering the amount of waste produced by the large supermarket chains these days. We also played with Marion's dog (a jack russell called Weasel), who would just lie down and present his stomach for a scratch as soon as he saw any human.

We got a quote from a mechanic who, mysteriously, managed to start the van straight away, but told us that the radiator was bust. There were a few other minor problems with it, for example, the bolts on the drive shaft were worn, so it could fall off at any point and pole vault the entire van onto its side; or the fact that there was a bolt missing that should have been holding the alternator (attenuator according to Amanda) in place, and if it keeps hitting the engine then it would have exploded. We weren't too worried.

The next day we drove up to Jenny and Mark's house (Matt's relatives, who incidentally live up a huge hill, we had to stop half way up to let the engine cool down) for Australia day - a nationwide celebration of the day that the British invaded the country (aboriginal people actually call it invasion day). Marion was very against this holiday, and her views kind of rubbed off on me a bit - but not enough to stop me from going to Jen and Mark's barbecue. While we were there that evening, they kindly offered to let us stay until we got the van fixed. As nice as Marion was, she didn't have a son who could fix Reggie for free!

It took a whole day to replace the radiator. The gap to pull out the radiator was smaller than the width of the radiator itself, so the rest of the van had to be dismantled to get it out, and then reassembled after we'd sourced a new one and put it in. We could see why the old radiator wasn't working - if you touched it, it would crumble to pieces! We thought we should also put a bolt in to hold down the alternator. Exploding on the highway didn't sound like too much fun...

From here, it was another waiting game, because we needed to wait until Monday to hand in the change of ownership forms. In the meantime we kept ourselves busy by playing PS one games (mainly Rayman and Tekken 3), we went go karting one day, and Mark and Sam even play in a band, so we went to see them one evening. While we were staying with Jen, her brother and his wife (Dave and Alicia) were staying there too. Dave is honestly the most Northern person I have ever met. His accent is so broad that I could rarely understand him, and he had a whole vocabulary of word that I'd never heard of!

By 4pm on Monday 30th Jan 2012, after spending at least an hour trying to hand in the change of ownership forms, we were finally on the road again! I'd like to say a HUGE thank you to everyone in Adelaide who made us feel so welcome, Marion, Jenny, Mark, Sam, Joel, Dave, Alicia, and all of the other people we met  during our stay. You were amazing, and I hope to one day see you all again, but for now, Melbourne was beckoning!

Kangaroo Island

So at the end of the last blog entry, Amanda, Matt and I had just arrived back in Adelaide, and since Jenny had no room for us this time around, we decided to stay with Marion (the Buddhist hippy from last time). And then began our search for a car to get us back to Wollongong. Marion told us about a van she’d seen for just $500! We went to have a look at it, and the guy who was selling it told us outright that it was a piece of crap and that it was so cheap because he just wanted to get rid of it (he used to use it as a camper van but he’d just bought a $10,000 Winnebago). He clearly didn’t need the money, so we thought he might be legit. We took it for a test drive and it seemed mechanically sound, so we bought it, called it Reggie, and hoped that this deal wouldn't turn out to be too good to be true. He even threw in a tent, sleeping bag, road atlas, bottle of wine and some beer!

We couldn't see Jenny again until Sunday, since she was working nights, and her husband Mark was working days, but when we bought the Reggie, it was only Tuesday. We didn't really want to stay in Adelaide for all that time, because it's a tiny city compared to most, and we'd already seen a lot of it, so we decided to spend a few nights on the nearby Kangaroo Island. We booked our ferries and that night we were there! Arriving in the small town of Penneshaw (although for Kangaroo Island - KI - it was a big city) we saw that after sunset small penguins come to the beach after a day of catching fish. We stayed there hoping to see an army of penguins coming onto the sand, but sadly they didn't show up. Disappointed, we drove along the south coast looking for somewhere to stay. I was driving, but I'd left my glasses at Jenny's house so very nearly ran over half the island's population of kangaroos! It got to about midnight and I was too tired to drive any more, and too scared of hitting wildlife, so we pulled over near a B&B and slept in the van.

The next day we got up early and got away from the B&B before they noticed us and went for a walk next to a lagoon. We were hoping for a nice little swim, but it was a protected area, and the water didn't look that nice anyway. When we got back, we had a nice, healthy breakfast of doritos and tinned spaghetti before heading further along the coast. We found a café where we stopped to have tea when a galah wondered over to us and let us stroke it before biting my finger. A man with a strange beard came and picked it up, fed it some milkshake and told us about a raptor show that would start in about an hour. We thought we may as well go along since we had nothing better to do. It was really interesting learning about these birds of prey, how their habits differed and where we could see wild ones.

We'd picked up a leaflet with adventure activities, and if you're a regular follower of this blog, then you will know that this will have instantly appealed to me! That afternoon, we tried sand surfing for the first time in the island's "little Sahara" desert. At first, we were all pretty crap to be honest, but we soon got the hang of it. I was surprised I could do it, considering I can barely balance on a skateboard, and could only stand up for about half a second on a surf board, but I feel like by the time we had to hand the boards back, I was pretty good (as in, I could get down the dune without falling over...). The only bad thing about this experience was that we had to walk back up the dunes with the boards if we wanted to go again. I think this was the biggest workout I've had since I left Wollongong. We were too exhausted to do anything after climbing up the dunes so many times, so we found a nice little spot by the river and played cards until we couldn't see any more and went to bed.

Friday started with a four hour kayak session up and down the river, which was fun - especially when we fell out (trying to get back in was the best part, mainly for the amusement of the people still in their boats), and after this we went to the Kelly Hill caves, which is a very (geologically) young limestone cave, at a mere 2 million years old. Despite its young age, it still had hundreds of interesting cave formations like stalactites, stalagmites and apparently gravity defying helictites (one I'd never heard of before, and they are still an unexplained phenomenon). As we drove further along the coast, we saw a sign for a koala walk where we were "guaranteed to see koalas" so of course we had to go and do it. Sure enough, we saw a fair few of them, along with kangaroos and the rare KI echidna (an echidna is like a hedgehog crossed with a porcupine but with a long nose).

Even when we'd finished gawping at the adorable Australian fauna, there was still another three hours until sunset, so we drove further still along the south coast (this island is a lot bigger than we thought it would be) to the "Remarkable Rocks" - which did actually live up to their name, with an interesting story about their formation and the way they had been shaped by erosion. They were made better by the fact that it was so late and no one else was there.

Saturday, our last day on the island, started at the nearby Admiral's Arch, where a colony of New Zealand fur seals made their home. We watched for a while as they lazed on the rocks, and some of the males play-fought, and we spotted a pup that had either lost its mum or had been rejected. It was heart breaking to watch it go from female to female trying to get some attention, but there wasn't much we could really do, so we just left. We then went to seal bay to see some more seals - Australian fur seals this time. Amanda and I took the guided tour so that we could go onto the beach, get close up, and hear some facts from the guide. Here is one of the facts: once females mature, they are impregnated for eighteen months, and eight days later are impregnated again, so they are constantly pregnant and breast feeding. I feel like I know a few people like this from school.

To break up the drive back to the ferry port, we decided to stop off wherever sounded interesting. We ended up going to a sheep dairy farm to sample some sheep's milk cheese and yoghurt (actually quite nice) at a distillery and a winery where we sampled some posh spirits, wines and walnuts (laced with limoncello). When we got back to Penneshaw, we went for a dip in the crystal clear ocean while we waited for the ferry and reflected on the great few days that we'd had.

But then, on the drive back to Adelaide, disaster struck. The temperature gage suddenly kept getting higher and higher, forcing us to pull over at what I thought was a garage (it was actually a house) where three helpful men (real men, that knew about cars, not like Matt and me) gave us some water for the radiator and made us at ease by talking to us and telling us that they didn't think it would be too bad. After a while, we set off again, but not long after, the temp rose again. When we turned the engine off we could hear the water in the radiator boiling - it was REALLY hot. We stopped again to let it cool down and set off again. Reggie seemed to run fine and managed to get us back to the city, but when we turned the engine off this time, it kind of spluttered and coughed before it went silent and revealed plumes of smoke coming from the engine.

The next day, Reggie wouldn't start. Definitely bad times. We were stuck in Adelaide. Luckily we'd booked him in with the mechanic on Tuesday (the lazy sod didn't work Saturday, Sunday or Monday, but he was recommended to us by Marion). All we can do now is await his verdict. We hope you get better soon Reggie!