Blogs from Torquay, Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia, Oceania

First – we do not know why the past couple of blog postings have lost their paragraph formatting – hopefully this will work better. This morning (Sunday) we have another first experience – we are going on a 2-day excursion. Fortunately Daylight Savings Time ended last night and we got an extra hour’s sleep this morning. Despite that we had to be in the lobby at 8:00 so we could not dawdle. We did get to check our e-mail and have message from Kathy saying that Janet’s brother Mike had a big gall stone removed and everything went well. We also got a note from Elizabeth confirming our flights and that she was going to pick us up at the airport. We also saw a message from David’s sister Janel that she is starting a 13 ... read more

December 20, 2013. The summer solstice is just a day away. This is weird for me since I'm used to that date being June 21, not December 21st. I'm not complaining though. I spent June 21 in the US so this is my second summer in a row. Last night it was light till about 9:35 in Wellington. We are pretty far south. I'm going to miss the longest day of the year here though. I'll be spending it in Melbourne. I've been to Melbourne before. Maybe one day I'll write about my first time there. It was an odd experience, but I've decided to give it another shot. I'll be meeting my friend Steve from Las Vegas there. He is coming to the southern hemisphere for three weeks in Australia and New Zealand. He'll be ... read more

Apollo Bay So nun sind wir die Great Ocean Road entlang gefahren. Was lässt sich groß darüber sagen, es war faszinierend. Wir sind in einem ziemlich günstigen Hostel untergekommen, 10$ p. Nacht, gute atmosphäre, freundliche Besitzerin..dort wurden wir auch von 3 Mädels in Billiard geschlagen, ziemlich strange.. Rainbow Falls Beauchamp Falls Ich glaub Bilder bringen hier mehr als Worte, in diesem Sinne....... read more

Ok so today we woke up and made our way down to Sorrento to catch the 12pm ferry across to Queenscliffe. (For you Tassie folk, thats going from one side of the bay across the heads to the other side. The crossing was really calm, we stayed in the van with Maxibon and slept the whole way, (unlike me, I know!!) Anyway, so when we got there.. The fun started!! The GPS woman kept getting herself confused (I'm still undecided as to how helpful they are at times :-S!). We began to head toward our destination, Torquay and ended up in Ocean Grove along the way. Whilst we were there we thought we'd fill up on fuel, get the gas bottles filled and do a food shop. We went to the local hardware store to get ... read more

Another week, another late blog. I hope everyone is well. I'm sorry it's late again but we have been real busy in the last few weeks. So what have the van gang been up to since the last mammoth blog? Well, we started the great ocean road in Torquay as you saw from the previous blog. We spent a few days there just relaxing by the beach and recharging our batteries after being in Melbourne. Torquay is famous for Bells beach, which holds surf competitions and discount retail outlets. As you would imagine you get to know each other very well whilst living in a van 24/7 so we have now worked out that Martin loves hats and Fox Racing. So when we came across a “fox racing” discount shop with a $5 hat box that ... read more