The Road Trip Saga

Okay, so I said I'd post an update after the diving trip. And I totally would have except the diving trip was cancelled due to 20-30knot winds. And, while I was disappointed, I do understand why. But tales of me and Lindsay schlepping ourselves back to Cairns to hang out and watch movies in Cairns (where the weather was also dreadful) do not make exciting blog stories.

So, instead I have the tales of our road trip. As you may (or may not) know, my little brother Mike is also now in Australia. He's here until Dec. 24th, and wanted to have some time to see me before heading off on his own adventures. So, he and Lindsay and I rented a camper van with plans of driving it from Sydney to Adelaide and back to Melbourne. Here's part one of our tales:

Day 1:
Sydney-Bega

Picked up a very sleepy but excited Mike at the central train station in Sydney and then the three of us got on the train to the random Sydney suburb where we picked up the van. It was a bit of a hike with all our gear from the train station to the caravan rental place, but we made it. And then waited to pick up our 'van. And waited. And waited. We finally headed off at about noon, two hours later. But after a quick stop for Starbucks and groceries, we got on the road!

Of course, it couldn't be all that smooth. We found out that tape cassettes from Canada don't work in Australia and so were stuck listening to the radio instead of our iPods. Very sad, but it also marked the start of our search through many small towns for an iPod cassette adapter (iTrip). Small town discount stores, we learned, are very random and entertaining places!

We pulled into the town of Bega at around 6pm and stayed at a very friendly caravan park for the night. After a yummy dinner, we introduced Mike to the joys of Tim Tams, and played a few rounds of Scrabble. It took us a bit of effort to convert the van into our beds, but we were rather comfy, I think.

Day 2:
Bega-Toorak/q

Day 2 started off with me having to check the oil and coolant in the engine. Once I got the engine open, it was all easy, but, well, I did have to read the instruction booklet. Who's silly plan was it to put the engine access under the passenger's seat?

After some coffee and yogurt (the Australian breakfast of champions!) we headed to the Bega cheese factory. Bega cheese is a pretty common brand down here, so it was quite exciting. We wandered around the museum part, and then headed straight to the cheese sampling area! For the budget-concious sum of $7, we picked up a chilli cheese and an aged cheddar called 'sharp and bitey'. Delicious! We looked around Bega for an iTrip, but still no success. We did manage to get an INXS cassette, though, which saved us from the country-Christian radio stations.

Next stop: Eden, home of a fairly decent whaling museum. My favourite part were the gigantic blue whale jaws hanging from the ceiling! Also in Eden, we looked for an iTrip (no luck) and introduced the local cafe to the concept of travel mugs. We went in and asked for two flat whites in our travel mugs. After looking at them confusedly, she took them in the back to measure them, and then came back to say that it would cost us $7 each to fill them! Lindsay and I picked up our jaws off the floor, and then had the idea to instead ask for a mug size to just be poured into our travel mugs. Cost: $3.80 each (and they were pretty much full). Probably one of the strangest coffee stories we've had yet!

In some random town past Eden, we finally managed to find an iTrip (thus rescuing us from the joys of small town talk radio).

We crossed the border into Victoria shortly before finding a caravan park for the night in the very cold, coastal town of Toorak. Other than snacking on some of our cheese and being very cold, Toorak was pretty uneventful. Oh, except we did manage to transform the van into a movie theatre so we could watch a couple movies (as it was too cold to just hang out).

Day 3:
Toorak-Pt. Campbell

We headed out from Toorak and then, after avoiding Melbourne as much as possible, began our trip on the famous (at least down here) Great Ocean Road! First stop - Torquay, home of many many many surf shops. We were all quite restrained, however, and just window shopped for all the pretty clothes.

After Torquay, the road pretty much hugs the twisty coastline for a long while. I'm sure it was quite Great and full of Ocean, but for me, it was just really twisty and hilly. But Stan (our van) did a very good job. We pulled into Pt. Campbell for the night, a very expensive touristy town right on the coast.

Day 4:
Pt. Campbell-Kingston SE

After waking up in Pt. Campbell, we backtracked 15km or so to see the 12 Apostles and the Loch Ard Gorge, two pretty nifty sandstone formations along the coastline. But after those, we pretty much decided we'd had enough of rock formations, so we headed back onto the Great Ocean Road.

That is, of course, until we saw the tourist sign pointing towards a fur seal colony. How could we resist detouring? We drove for what felt like ever (but was probably 40 minutes) until we reached a tiny seaside village in the middle of nowhere. Just above it, there was a sign for the fur seals pointing to a parking lot. So into the parking lot we went, only to find that the fur seals were actually a 2.5hr 'very strenuous' walk away. As it was raining and cold, and well past lunch time, we decided to skip the fur seals and just eat lunch in the parking lot. And you'd think we'd have learned not to follow brown tourist signs on a whim but, well, you'll see...

We crossed the border into South Australia on that day, as well, and just on the other side, we saw a sign pointing to a whale nursery. We've no recollection of what town we were in, but the idea of a whale nursery was intriguing so we headed off. Only to get a little lost and then to find out that the whales are only around between May and October. No more brown signs, we said!

That night we pulled into the lovely caravan park in Kingston SE, where we were right on the ocean. It had been a pretty busy day, so we pretty much just crashed, and slept very well, being the first night I was warm!