"Fergal is the reason abortion is still legal"

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Asia was beautiful, but all in all, nothing on our trip can really compare to the views on the Great Ocean Road...

After we finished writing our last blog entry we headed back to our hostel for cheap pizza and beer, and played a little table tennis (got told we were pros, didnt mention having a table at home!) and thought we should have a fairly early night seeing as we had to get up early for the great ocean road tour. However having had a few drinks we were still pretty awake and played some music and room volleyball with our two canadian roomates for quite some time. There were 6 beds in our room but only four of us, so when we eventually got to bed Amelia had the genius idea of taking the mattress off of her top bunk, putting it on top of the bottom one to make a very comfy bed! However Connor then decided he was jealous and came and got in the bed (made to bring his own sleeping bag though). John, our other roomate decided he had to go one better and made Lily get up and help him make a three mattress bed and share it, which it turned out was a failure as they kept rolling into each other and come the morning Lily was very tired as she found John creepy, needless to say we didnt get their facebook, and rushed off to our bus. Our tour was run by a lovely man called Jason, and consited of us, 4 Belgians and 2 Germans (when they learnt we had spent years learning their languages they got quite excited, until it was revealed we could speak neither!) We spent our day driving to different view points and beaches, and had a picnic lunch at a lighthouse which had been where 'round the twist' was filmed which got Lily very excited. We got very close to kangeroos and Koalas and got bombarded by wild parrots, so it felt like a very proper Australian experience! Its hard to describe the Great Ocean Road so try look it up and check out some photos! We finished our day with a bbq and bonfire at a hostel by the sea, ran by a very strange lady who told the boys they could burn the wood then later came running out having changed her mind and sent us to bed. The next day we went on a walk through a rainforest and went to more viewpoints (including London Bridge!) and eventually he dropped us at our new hostel, where we pretty much went straight to bed! The following day we left our things at the hostel and got a tram back to st Kilda to sort out our travel plans and chilled in the park watching cricket for a bit. As it was getting close to the time to get our bus, we headed back to our hostel, only to find we couldnt find it! We asked in many different shops in the area and noone had heard of it! We were running around for about an hour until we eventually found it and had to run for the bus, which we just made! A very uncomfy overnight bus journey followed, the people behind us wouldnt let us put our seat backs even a bit even though we needed to sleep (so we waited until they got off for a break, put our seats right back and pretended to be asleep!) We arrived in Sydney and were picked up by Michael and Akiko who immeadiatly fed us, let us nap in very comfy beds and then took us out and treated us to a roast dinner and some relaxing time on the beach. We decided to have an early night and watch a film, so chose Harry Potter (throughout the week we watched the entire collection) and had the best nights sleep we've had since we left! The next day was rainy so we stayed in, and cooked (we were quite excited to be using a kitchen!). The next day however was perfect weather so we got a train into the centre and a ferry to Manly (seeing the bridge and opera house on the way which were smaller than we expected). We spent the day lying on Manly beach with a friend from Shaftesbury toppng up our tans and then headed back to our waiting cooked dinner, we were definetely spoilt! Michael also took us to Bondi beach (which turned out was very close to shops and we bought far too much!) and both Michael and Akiko took us to Blue mountains which was beautiful and we got to walk partway down and get some good photos! On our last day with them, their daughter and her four children came over for a bbq (although it was raining) and we had a lovely last day (and got loaded up with snacks) before getting on the bus to Byron. We felt like we were saying good bye to our parents and were quite sad to leave! Byron Bay was quite a party town, we were right on the beach which was lush but the weather wasnt great! We did make the walk to the lighthouse and the most easterly part of the Australian coast though so we impressed with ourselves! our time in Byron finished in a $5 all the sangria you can drink in 2 hours night, which was fun, but leathal, and our morning bus ride to Surfers Paradise wasnt great! In surfers we immeadiatly bought tickets to club crawls for Fri and Sat night, which included free drinks and were a lot of fun! However on arriving at our hostel, who did we see but the Canadians from Melbourne, we werent too pleased to see them and avoided them like the plague! We made friends with some nice irish guys, although they didnt come out much as the got kicked out of most places! Our hostel was connected to a big hotel so we got free access to their hottub, pool and sauna! We didnt really want to leave Surfers after only 3 nights but headed up to Brisbane yesterday, as soon as we were checked in John (we met in Laos) came and picked us up and took us to meet his sister and nephew, who we spent the day chilling with playing pool and having a few (soft) drinks. We headed back fairly early as hadnt slept much at surfers and had a nice lie in today (woke up to the entire housekeeping crew changing beds around us, slightly awkward!) we are off to Southbank today and to meet Dominik (the german from Laos) at the swimming lagoon! Aus is very very expensive so are living off packet mac and cheese... pretty rank!

xoxo

Amelia & Lily

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