I was planning on having a shower before we left but I overslept, Phil woke me up at 5am, we gathered our things and went out to catch our shuttle bus. We were there pretty early as it says you only need to be there 30 minutes before flight departure for domestic flights, but there was a huge queue for the Quantas check in. The systems were down and it seemed a lot of people had trouble checking in online. They had to check in each flight that morning systematically. Waiting in that queue was like the old days when you went on holiday! We had waited for about an hour and our flight still hadn't been called up, looked like it was going to have to be delayed. Suddenly there was an announcement over the tannoy saying the Jetstar check in for flights to Adelaide was closing. That was our flight. We had been standing in the wrong queue! It was confusing becuase we had booked it through Quantas and that is what it said on the ticket, it was just operated by Jetstar (which was said in smaller print) so when we got to the airport it was only natural for us to go and stand in the Quantas queue! We were very lucky and were rushed through by the skin of our teeth. Security didn't help matters for us but we made it on the plane without any trouble, thank goodness. If we hadn't been paying attention we totally would have missed the flight, despite having been at the airport since 5.45am for a flight that left at 7.05am, unbelievable! We had a good flight anyway, I had to buy some very expensive breakfast on the plane but never mind, and we landed about 10.20am. We were half an hour forwards in time which was strange. We collected our stuff and there was no customs to go through so that was nice. We headed over to the car rental desk, ready and prepared for it this time. It went a lot easier than the first time and despite a few stupid extra charges there wasn't any complications. We ended up getting a free upgrade as there wasn't any of the car I had booked left. The upgrade gave us a very nice, very posh Ford Falcon XR6, which I was nervous to drive! I have never driven such a nice car, and it was so big. Plus I hadn't driven in nearly 2 months, so I was glad for it to be an automatic again. We found our hostel with out problrms but then needed to figure out parking, we found a spot which gave us an hour, checked in and asked about parking. The hostel had 2 permit spaces, but the last space was waiting on a phonecall from someone to confirm they wanted it, so the lady on reception said to come back in two hours to see if they had rang back. There was free WiFi at the hostel so we used up our time easily, went to move the car to give us another hour, but we ended up spending 20 minutes trying to find one, to no avail, so just thought we'd ask about the permit space again, she hadn't heard back so decided to give it to us as we were waiting, thankfully! So that was good we didn't need to worry about that for the next couple of days. We showered and then went into the city centre to wander around. Christmas decorations everywhere again, still not getting used to it! We went into Toys R Us and managed to spend a fair amoutn of time in there! It's a nice city centre. It was however very chilly walking around, only 18 degrees and a fresh wind, a big difference to the heat we were experiencing the previous day! Still nice and sunny though. We headed back late afternoon, there was a free BBQ at the hostel that night, so made sure we were ready at a table for that. It was a good BBQ, and there were doughnuts for pudding! Afterwards was a little pool competition, although not proper pool, that was fun to watch, we just sat and took the time to upload photos, chatted to a few people on our table, there was a nice Californian girl who was from San Jose, so it was cool talking to her! I had started to feel a little rough that evening so we had a fairly early night.
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| Nice churchy building in Adelaide |
The next morning we got up and had a good free breakfast (been doing well for free food this part of the trip!) and went down to Adelaide's central market. It was really nice and there was so much cheap food, we got a few tasters which were delicious and then we had a little look around Chinatown. We went back to the hostel to drop some bits off and went back out again to head towards the botanic gardens. We got a little lost on the way but had a nice walk through some parkland to get there. We saw some wild parrot type birds, and on one of the paths through the park there were thousands of huge ants, it was like something out of a film, the ground just looked like it was moving they were walking around so quickly. And even though we didn't pause they were still finding their way into our flip flops, urgh! The botanic gardens was really good, it was huge and had lots of different little areas and plant houses. We have enjoyed wandering around gardens and parks whilst away! We took a walk back through the city center from the other end, joining back to where we had been the previous day, and then got back to the hostel. Again we used some internet time, had something to eat, and then drove out to a little suburb called Glenelg which was lovely, and watched the sun set on the beach. It was a bit cold and the sun actually set a bit prematurely behind some cloud but it was still nice! After that I had wanted to find the Old Adelaide Gaol, I did want to do a ghost tour of it but we decided to save our money, and we were very tired anyway. After completely missing the turning and getting lost, we found it eventually and it wasn't a very exciting looking building anyway so we just went back and went to bed.
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| Amazing food art! |
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| Kookaburra sitting on a bench |
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| Sunset in Glenelg |
We got up, ate and checked out by 10, to get on our way on our first proper drive, to Horsham. It was about a 5 and a half hour drive, and it was very enjoyable in the car we had. The roads are very long and boring in places so we were thankful for a CD player! On the way we saw loads of cockatoos, there was about 20 of them gathered together at the side of the road it was amazing! Saw lots of tumble weed too which was funny. We got to Horsham which was actually an alright place, despite people telling us it was a very small, backwards farm town. Not somewhere you'd want to spend much time but more than adequate for a stop over! We were staying in a motel which felt like we were in California again. It was actually so nice just to totally have our own space again. We walked into town to find some food and then chilled out all afternoon and evening. I was feeling a bit grotty and had just got into bed and napped while Phil watched TV. I woke up for dinner and we watched Mrs Doubtfire then went to bed!
We left a little earlier the next morning as we had a long day of driving the Great Ocean Road ahead of us. It took us about 3 hours just to get to the coast, and eventually we got on Great Ocean Road which was a nice drive. We stopped off at various viewing points, 'Bay of Islands', 'London Bridge', 'Thunder Cave', 'The Twelve Apostles', which was supposed to have lots of interesting wildlife and things, it was absolutely heaving with tourists, but we didn't see a lot different from what we'd already been seeing! They were all basically different rock formations off the coast. It was pretty cool. At one point we saw the strangest creature in the road, I had to pull over and take a picture of it, it was like a lizard cross with a snake! There were some really nice bendy roads right along the coast, which again reminded us of some of the driving in California. Eventually we got to a few small towns, and then Torquay where we'd booked to stay one night. Throughout the day I was progressively feeling worse, sneezing like crazy. We had wanted to go to Bells Beach but after turning down the road for it we decided it was too long to get there, and with it being 6pm, hungry and having been driving since 8.45am, we just wanted to get to the hostel by this point. Eat, and sleep. We had a very confusing time trying to find the hostel which claimed to be right off the freeway, and after ages, we realised the we'd been driving past the hostel several times, but it had changed its name, without telling me. We went up to the desk to check in, and found out that since my booking, the hostel had actually closed down, changed hands and re opened a few weeks ago. And they were fully booked, and also didn't have my booking as it should have been cancelled when the original place closed down. We were actually quite glad about this, used to money we had saved to get a McDonalds, and powered through to Melbourne where we had arranged to stay with friends of the Caves. We could not get hold of the person we were staying with but decided to wing it anyway and rocked up about 8pm. Luckily the guy we were staying with was in, a little surprised but he let us in and we just kept ourslves to ourselves for the evening! Parking was a bit of a nightmare again but once the time limits were up we parked it on the street for the night. It felt good to know we were stopping there for a while. And we crashed out.
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| Bay of Islands, Great Ocean Road |
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| Thunder Cave |
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