Great Ocean Road, car adventures, and Melbourne

Hey again, time for another blog update. Last time I made an entry it was right before we all went on a trip down the Great Ocean Road. We left early in the morning and eventually made it down to the 12 Apostles. They are rock formations that are standing tall in the middle of the ocean. There used to be 12 of them but with erosion there are only about 6 or 7 now. They looked amazing, we got to see them around sunset which made them that much more impressive. I’ll attach a picture of them to this entry. We did a lot of other cool things while we traveled down the road too. We got out at this one spot and saw tons of wild koalas. At first we thought they would be tough to find, but as soon as we started walking down the road all we had to do was look up and there was one in every couple of trees. Koalas spend something like 20 hours a day sleeping so only a couple of them were actually doing stuff. They were so close you could just about reach up and touch them. All along the road there were plenty of scenic lookouts, rock formations, and caves on the water. We brought food with us and stopped at this cool flat rock area that the water came right up to.
I don’t think that I have ever mentioned our car that we bought down here. It is a ’85 Saab Hatchback that we got a good deal on. There are plenty of stories about the struggles of the Saab. The trouble really started began about 2 and a half weeks ago…
1.) At work the car’s engine overheated and basically started making this clunking noise. After leaving it sitting at the University for about a week, we thought we fixed it by replacing a hose from the radiator to the engine. After the repair, about 5-10 minutes down the road (in the middle of empty farmland) on the way home, we realized that the temperature gauge was pointing straight up. We had to pull over for about 10 minutes and wait for the engine to cool down. After driving for about 2 minutes then waiting for about 10 a couple of times we finally made it to a sheep pasture with a pond near the road. Luckily we had a bucket in the car and Andrew jumped the fence and refilled the radiator from the pond. With that fresh water we made it the rest of the way home without any more temperature troubles.
2.) Wherever we go we now carry about 6 liters of water with us in the car. We have to refill it every time before we start the engine, and starting the car can take about 20 tries.
3) The car has no idle so you have to drive using both feet, always keeping a bit of pressure on the gas.
4) The Saab now only uses 3 of 4 cylinders wherever we go. It basically has the acceleration of a gas scooter. Big hills and pulling out into traffic can be an adventure.
All in all though the Saab is getting us safely to and from work. We just keep telling ourselves it only has to work for 2 more weeks.
This past weekend Andrew and I went to Melbourne to visit Shannon. She is a friend of mine from NC State and is doing an international exchange program for a semester at Monash University in Melbourne. We hung out with her and one of her girlfriends that she met there. Melbourne is definitely a really cool city. It had some of the most amazing food, we ate dinner at Cicciolina Restaurant in St. Kilda, some of the best food ever. The city was packed with people on Saturday night, we went out to a couple of bars and clubs and had a great time. We stayed in Melbourne that night at Shannon’s place and the next morning we got to go see a Australian Rules Football game. We have been seeing the games a lot on TV since we arrived but it was awesome to get to see it all up close. We got seats that were only 3 rows back from the action! It was two of the top tier teams in Australia, the No 2 Hawthorne Hawks versus the No 6 Sydney Swans. Hawthorne Hawks ended up winning a pretty exciting game.
Only 2 weeks left!!!

---

---