Melbourne, Australia

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My first thoughts as we stepped of the bus into the Melbourne evening was "Fuck it's cold in Australia!" The balmy nights in Thailand had conditioned us somewhat and now it was dark, cold and windy. We shivered through the night and surprisingly managed to get on the right tram 1st time...although we did get off 2 stops early for our hostel. Can't win em all. Excited to be in a new place though, and one where we would, for the most part, be able to make ourselves understood.

Cooees in St Kilda was our first taste of a big hostel. We walked in at 11pm and it was well busy. Full of people having fun and drinking. Whatever next!?! They gave us our keys and that was that. No details of the facilities, the local area...nothing. For a place that's had so many great reviews, I expected them to be a bit more helpful. Bastards! Our nights there were spent in what I assume a male university dorm room is like. Dirty clothes everywhere, food everywhere, rubbish everywhere and a smell I can't, and would rather not attempt to, put my finger on. Didn't plan on spending too much time in there so no big deal.

Headed into St Kilda the next day. It lives upto it's trendy name tag, with lots of street cafes, bars and restaurants and a pretty decent stretch of beach, although it was pretty busy so no good for getting your norks out on...so we didn't. Instead, we caught the tram into the centre of Melbourne and wandered around soaking in the sights. It's an easy centre to walk around as it's just a massive grid, so you can't get lost...although Gary managed it.

On our way home, we decided to stop off at one of the open air cinema showings. It was Grease so we thought it'd be a laugh. I thought it might be deckchairs or something like that, but as we were walking into the park we saw the crowds of people with beanbags, coolers, blankets, coats...the lot. We were a tad unprepared. It was actually just an area of grass that you sit on and everyone around us was having picnics and drinking chilled beers and having a right merry time. Meanwhile, as the sun went down and the wind picked up, us 2 numptys were sat on damp grass trying desperately to keep warm and get comfortable. Some kind folks next to us took pity and let us use their spare blanket. Bless em! Despite the cold, it was a wicked night and everyone was into it, singing along and waving lighters in the air. Pulp Fiction was due to be shown in 4 days time and we were well up for that!

The next night we went down to the Espy, which is a much talked about venue in St Kilda that has loads of cool bands play there and often has free gigs...so of course we were going to check it out. Before we went in though, we saw it made sense to have a massive ice cream that would take me longer than the walk to the Espy to eat, which resulted in us standing round the corner from the venue (so as not to ruin our super cool image) while I finished. Seemed like a fab plan when 3 drunk Aussie girls stopped and chatted to us for a while, asking for licks of my ice-cream! Oo-er! Milled about in there for a while and then got asked to join a group of girls for some drinks, which we did. Hung about with them for a bit. One of them did the old "my mate fancies you" line and we then told them that we were only here for 1 more day, which seemed to put a downer on things. Plus, the "mate" was the designated driver, so was totally sober...not sure my slightly drunken ramblings made the best impression. As soon as they left, my mind caught up with me and I realised all of the things that I should have said to her. Oh well, some things never change...my lack of game being one of them! A cool funky motown type band started at 1.30am and played for an hour. After that, we (and by we, I mean I) stumbled home. Just as we'd got into our bunks, our friendly dutch room-mate Anouk got back totally pissed and proceeded to entertain us by making herself laugh for the next hour with her own hiccups and waking the whole dorm up.

Up early to check out. Got the tram into Melbourne. Went to the wrong car hire place. Felt like a prize twat when I realised why they couldn't find my details. After getting our car from the right place, we spent a few minutes driving round the one way system...just for fun you understand, not cos we couldn't get out of it. Collected our stuff from the hostel and then headed out towards the Great Ocean Road.

We spent the afternoon stopping at as many brown signs or lay-bys as we could. Miles of beautiful deserted beaches and coastline. Even managed to avoid the tour buses. After a while we arrived in Lorne, which my sister had raved about and we liked the look of, so we decided to stay the night. Checked out the hostel Gem had stayed in and as luck would have it, they had room. In a 500 person dorm...or something like that. There was a group of "youngsters" getting drunk, so we dropped our bags off and headed out to look around the place a bit. Lorne seems to be a bit of a tourist spot for Australians too. It's a cool little town though. Good mix of backpackers and holiday makers. When we got back, most of the dorm had already gone out to the pub, so we cooked up a bit of food and sat on the balcony enjoying some random mexican band playing in the restaurant downstairs.

Checked out early to get a good start on the GOR. Felt good to have our own wheels. The weather was good and the roads were empty. Stopped to see the local waterfall, Erskine Falls, and compared to some of the lame ones we saw in Asia, this was pretty good. It was actually water falling, rather than just tricking over some rocks down a bit of a slope. After this, I can't really account for the places we stopped at, there was just so many of them. It was all very dramatic and beautiful, with the 12 Apostles being the highlight at the end of the day (Google them if you don't know what they are). At this stop, there were literally hundreds of people on the lookout walkways, so although the photos look mightily impressive, just out of shot were crowds of people taking exactly the same shot. It was still cool to see it all though, crowds or no crowds. Stopped at the Otway national park to do a treetop walk, but it was pretty average. Cool to be that high amongst the trees, but you didn't really see anything. Could have done with a couple of monkeys up there or something.

After a long days driving, we arrived in Warrnambool. Loved this little place. We stayed at Warrnambool Beach Backpackers and it was a sweet little hostel. It had a huge common room area with a massive TV and loads of sofas to chill out on...oh, and it had the coolest cat too. Ruby just lay there all day accepting any fuss you wanted to dish out. We were only there for the night so didn't have much chance to do much about town. Got food, ate it, looked at where to stay the next night. The usual. Would defo spend a few more nights there if I go back.

The next day we took the inland part of the great southern touring route. Lots of national parks that all look the same, but were still beautiful to drive through. We did see an emu, a wallaby,a few dead kangaroos and an old volcano. Oh, and a few million flies, right in my face. Fuckers! Our hunt for a little town like Warrnambool turned up nothing so we headed straight back to Melbourne for 3 more nights.

The Victoria Hall hostel was all new and revamped so that each bunk had its own little dimmer switch and shelf and plug socket. Simple things. Very fancy compared to what we've had so far. It was also right near the Italian district of Melbourne, so of course we had a bit of a wander up there. The road was full of restaurants, all trying to convince you that they were the best. I picked the one with the red and white checked tablecloths, an obvious sign of quality food! Had a pretty damn tasty pizza and a spot of vino. Got chatting to some kooky Australian/Italian girl. She was nuts. We liked her instantly. After there, we just wandered round the centre a bit. It was all very quiet and not much happening so we went back to the hostel. Oh, I forgot to mention, it was 39 degrees all day. Back at the hostel at 1130pm, it was still 28 degrees.

After a night sleeping right next to the aircon vent for the room, I was ready for a bit of heat. What I got was a massive shed load of heat. Oh well. We checked out an exhibition called Setting the Scene at the ACMI which was all about the set design of movies. Some bits were quite interesting, but I was just glad to be in a place with AC. After sweating round the city some more, it was time to check into our new hostel, Urban Central. It was a lot like the last one. Just been revamped I think. It was just as big and busy as the last one too. Think I prefer the smaller ones. Just feels a bit more personal. Also, the AC in this one was crap. It had been on all day and only made a tiny area above it cold, the rest of the room was proper bake-ola!

Pulp Fiction was amazing. We were prepared this time with a full load of food and drink. The weather was also way better for lying on the grass watching movies. Half way through, we got to hear a bit of the Neil Young concert too. Nice. Could see a few people bopping along to Rockin in the Free World. Outdoor cinema is such a great idea, but you really do need the consistent good weather to make it any good.

After a nice lie in, we went to Chapel Street as it was supposed to have some pretty cool shops and stuff to look round. This may be the case, but it was 42 degrees. Not many things are fun in that heat. Found a few cheap books that I'd been after though, so that totally made up for walking round dripping with sweat.

That night, one of the guys in our dorm was sick on himself. He was on the top bunk too. The guy on the bottom, unsurprisingly, shot out from his bed to check his stuff, but the guy seemed to have managed to keep the vom local. And he didn't even wake up. It was an interesting last night in Melbourne. Thankfully we were up and out early so didn't have to witness the clean up effort the next day.

Melbourne: pretty cool place. Definitely loads more to see. Could probably live there. Will definitely visit again.

After spending longer than we planned in Melbourne, we now had 3 weeks to drive upto Cairns...oh shit.

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