Great Ocean Road and Grampians

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I’ve been away for over 2 months now and it seems to have flown by yet I feel like I’ve been living here for ever! Once again I’ve got a bit crap at updating this thing but I’ll try and remember everything that’s happened.

We decided to do a trip down great ocean road a few weeks ago for Rachels birthday and it was amazing! We were originally hoping to do a road trip with a few other people but after failing to find any normal/non creepy people who wanted to go the same weekend as us we gave in and booked a tour! It actually turned out to be a pretty good group and the guide was hilarious, he had us all in stitches for the whole weekend. We started off by seeing Bells Beach which had huge waves and lots of surfers as they were setting up for the Ripcurl competition. After this we carried on driving down the coast and stopped off at look out points along the way. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t the greatest, it’s so typical that it had been sunny and dry for weeks and then that was the weekend it decided to be really windy and rain!! The scenery still looked amazing though and the beaches were gorgeous. It must be amazing to live in one of the houses along the way, most of them were up high on stilts and had glass fronts facing out onto the beach – if anyone has some spare millions and wants to buy me one feel free J

After we’d stopped in Apollo Bay for lunch we went to see the Twelve Apostles, although god knows why they call them this as there have only ever been 9 of them! There are actually only 8 now as well as one collapsed in July 2005. They were pretty cool to look at and definitely worth a stop but the cynic in me couldn’t help but think ‘oh look some big rocks!’

Next stop was Loch Ard Gorge which I thought was really amazing. It was really windy by this point and the waves crashing against the rocks were HUGE! You could stand on the top of the cliffs and look down on the whole area but you could also climb down onto the beach and onto the rocks. It was so windy on the beach I actually thought I was going to be swept away into the sea at one point. It’s called Loch Ard Gorge after a ship called Loch Ard crashed into the rocks there years and years ago after making a voyage from England. There were only 2 survivors from the shipwreck, a 15 year old boy called Tom who worked on the ship and a teenage girl called Eva who was the daughter of one of the families on board. The boy was washed ashore and then went back into the water to rescue the girl after he heard her screams for help. Afterwards he apparently proposed to her a few times but she turned him down and returned to England (bit ungrateful if you ask me, he did save her life after all!)

After Loch Ard Gorge we went to London Bridge (seriously is there any places left in England where they haven’t stolen the names?!) Although to be fair I guess it’s known as London Arch now as back in the 90’s part of it actually collapsed meaning the Arch is no longer connected to the mainland. Two tourists were actually on the outer part of the arch when the bit near the shore collapsed and were left stranded until they were rescued by helicopter. After we’d spent a bit of time there we started travelling a bit further inland to get to our hostel in the Grampians for the night. No one else was at the hostel, not even the owner so we had the whole run of the place which was pretty cool. It was very imaginatively called ‘Neds Other Beds’ as the owner already had another hostel called ‘Neds Beds’ (clever folks these Australians!) Me and Rachel had conveniently remember to pack a 4 litre bag of Goon so we spent the evening chatting to everyone else in our group and getting drunk - this proved to be a bit of a mistake as we had to get up at 6 o clock the next morning so had gotten very little sleep!! After we’d all grumpily traipsed out of bed and had breakfast we headed to the Grampians National Park, we even got to see wild kangaroos on the way as well. It soon became clear there was a reason we’d left so early and it was definitely worth it – as we hiked up one of the trails the sun started to rise and the whole place looked absolutely amazing! We were soon that high up that we could see for miles and the views were breathtaking. We carried on trotting along enjoying out hike as it got steeper and steeper and steeper…… Now don’t get me wrong I actually quite like hiking and don’t mind if it’s steep and hard work but as we got further up I’m not even sure the word hiking does it justice! I think rock climbing would be a much more apt term. It soon got to the point where we were straddling the rock edge and climbing up with only about 3 inches of rock between us and certain death! The rocks were also very smooth and didn’t really have any foot holds, now when you’re wearing 3 pound pumps from Primark which offer no grip whatsoever you really really need the rocks to at least have a bit of grip to them!! Poor Rachel was terrified as she’s quite scared of heights as it is and it didn’t help that we’d spent all day yesterday going to see rocks which has collapsed randomly and now they expected us to feel safe climbing on them?! Luckily (as you can probably tell by the fact I’m writing this!) we did not actually die and just about managed to make it down safely!

After the hike we went to an aboriginal centre which I’m sure would have been amazing apart from the fact it was closed! Bit disappointed as after looking into a bit more I think you had the opportunity to paint your own boomerang there which would have been pretty cool! Over the next few hours we did a bit more walking (thankfully not as difficult as the first hike!) and went to a few look out points but nothing really compared to the view at sunrise. Next stop was MacKenzie falls which was pretty nice and after that it was on to a vineyard – yay!

We were a little disappointed at how little wine you actually drank whilst wine tasting, I always thought it was a secret excuse to get really drunk?! The wines we tried were really nice though, a lot of them were sparkling and had a really nice taste to them and we even tried a Red sparkling wine which was very unusual (I’m afraid that’s the extent of my wine knowledge – I can tell whether it’s red, white or rose and whether it’s sparkling or not and that’s about it!) I treated me and Rach to a bottle of one of the champagnes for the bus journey back as we were heading out as soon as we got back to Melbourne for a birthday night out.

Once we got back to Melbourne we were actually pretty drunk as we had carried on drinking Goon once our champagne ran out! Now you would think that after 2 days of hiking, being battered by rain and gale force winds that I would at least shower or wash my hair before going into the city but no we decided we were too drunk to care and went out looking like tramps instead – Nights out always seem to be better when you don’t try too hard!

Since being back in Melbourne I haven’t really been up to a great deal as I’ve been spending a bit too much money since being here so have been trying to cut back! Went to a gig one night at the Espy to see FooVana (Bet you can’t guess who they’re a tribute to….Haha!), Patalicca (again go on have a guess!) and a Bon Jovi tribute band – apparently they weren’t clever enough to come up with a name for this one!

It’s also the Melbourne Comedy Festival on at the moment so went to one of the shows the other night as well which was hilarious! A bit immature but the main reason we went was because the title of the show was ‘Shaggers’ – I mean that’s got to be funny! It had several different comedians doing a set each and they were all hilarious. Was a bit of a random night in general though as before the show we went to our local bar – ‘The Randy Dragon’ and when we walked in I genuinely thought I’d been transported back in time to a school disco from the 1990’s, they actually had a smoke and fog machine next to the DJ Booth!! I haven’t seen one of those in years and years and the fog coming out of it was that thick that you couldn’t really see more than a few feet in front most of the time. All I kept thinking of was that old TV show ‘Stars in your eyes’ and had to really fight the urge to run through the smoke screaming ‘And Tonight Matthew I’m going to be….!’

Despite all the entertainment here I am getting bored of Melbourne now after 2 months and am ready to go and see somewhere different. Which is why a few nights ago after a bottle of wine me and Rachel rather impulsively decided we’re going to leave Melbourne and run off into the outback for a bit before moving to Darwin! We’re flying down to Adelaide early tomorrow morning! Now in hindsight we haven’t really left ourselves much time to sort anything out and we only really have enough money for the 2 week trip through the outback and then a tiny bit left over to live off once we get to Darwin….but I’m sure it will all work out fine!

Hope everyone back home is ok, if you don’t heard from me again I’ve probably been bitten by a spider/snake or got lost in the outback! (just kidding mum, I’ll be fine : ) ) Miss everyone loads xxxx

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