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Leaving Coogee finally
After the most restless sleep of my life, which involved me getting up several times to watch some of the footie, Lizz came and woke me at 8am, giving ourselves two and a half hours to pack and tidy the house before Neville (our landlord) would come to inspect. We blitzed our way around the house, a much harder task than we’d anticipated (thanks Sian). Neville came round on time but naturally I wasn’t even dressed yet but we were soon packed up, deposit in hand (which was a surprise due to the broken bed) and off out the door, Lizz with her tiny 30L backpack and handbag and me with my 75L bag, daypack, handbag and two camp chairs!! We dropped Lizz’s spare stuff at OzIntro for her to pick up when she goes back to Sydney and jumped in a cab to the airport!
Luckily, due to Lizz’s immensely underweight backpack, she carried over my excess of 3kg and the two camp chairs weight at check-in! Lizz then accidentally took a massive corkscrew through security (sorry Gen we had to throw it out!) and finally in the airport, we went to the pub for
some lunch and a beer. It was soon time to head to the gate and board our plane to Melbourne.
The flight was just over an hour long. On descending upon Melbourne we noticed a lot of fields and greyness but we were landing at Avalon airport near Geelong. We collected our bags and hopped onto the airport shuttle to the city and a few snoozes later, we arrived. Finding the tram to take us to St.Kilda was slightly more of a challenged especially with all the luggage but we managed it and eventually found our way to the Base hostel there that Lizz had picked up a leaflet for. It looked amazing on entry and luckily they had room for us. We dumped our bags in the smelly room with the boys and sat in the downstairs bar researching Melbourne stuff and waiting for the free BBQ.
Come 6.30pm, the whole hostel seemed to descend on the bar and after having realised I needed to by a drink in order to claim the free BBQ (something only insinuated by the quotation marks around the word free) we queue up to collect our burger, sausage and sliced bread!
Lizz and I decided to have a look around St.Kilda afterwards only to make it down the road to this cool bar. We ended up staying for only one cocktails however, as we were just too tired and upon arriving back at the hostel, Lizz literally passed out! It was an interesting night to say the least. Although we had gone to bed extremely early for a hostel, to be woken up by a guy walking in several hours later, switching the light on and then proceeding to play his guitar resulted in a very evil glare from Lizz!
Melbourne city
Naturally, we woke up early to a dorm completely asleep, so Lizz and I showered and headed into town to meet my Auntie Lynne for lunch. We managed to get the tram ok into the city, however we got completely lost trying to reach Federation Square where we’d arranged to meet Lynne. After checking with the information centre in the train station and buying only two pear drops from a shop to get change, we made it onto the right tram! We had a wander around the cool place that is Federation Square before Lynne arrived and
took us to this amazing café strip in this lane where we had a great Italian lunch.
Afterwards, Lizz and I wander along the river towards the Eureka tower which claims to be the highest tower in the southern hemisphere and the tallest residential tower in the world. Up we went in the lift that took us to the 88th floor in 68secs and had a wander around much to Lizz’s horror. We then decided after much debating (Lizz wouldn’t give a definite answer) that we would go on “The Edge,” a completely 360º see-through lift which extended out of the building. Lizz was terrified and grabbing the pole for dear life but it was an incredible sight, especially lying face down!!
Once we descended from the heavens, we walked back across the city to our tram stop and headed back to St. Kilda to have some dinner and get changed for our exciting evening ahead….Cirque du Soleil! We managed to find the waterfront where it was being held fine though Lizz was panicking we’d be late. The show was amazing and this time actually held in a circus tent rather than a theatre hall like last time
I saw them. Lizz was more than happy about the whole thing and it was a great night out. After trying on lots of masks and taking photos in the souvenir shop, we missioned the journey back to our hostel only to find this huge crowd hanging outside. Not until we got closer did we realise there was some big thing going on in the hostel bar, and the people outside were the smokers! Luckily the noise wasn’t so bad in our room so we were able to go to bed fine!!
After a lie in the next morning, we wandered down to the shops and got some lunch while the afternoon was spent strolling down the beachfront (not a nice beach granted) at St Kilda. At around 5pm we journey the entire length of the 96 tram line from St Kilda to East Brunswick to have dinner at Lynne and Ian’s house, having a domestic like a proper married couple along the way! We had a great evening drinking wine, eating Chinese and chatting about some very random topics like WiFit and Lizz’s distaste for the media!
Everybody needs good Neighbours
Saturday morning was a
much earlier affair for me than usual due to my booking the Neighbours tour for 8.05am! It was a half an hour trip out of the city to Pin Oak Court aka. Ramsey Street! Along the way we got to watch the ‘Neighbours Revealed’ program highlight some of the best Neighbours moments. And soon enough, we were in Suburbia and at our destination. The rain left much to be desired and the street was smaller than I expected but all in all it was very surreal seeing the homes! According to our driver, they try to not film outside when it is raining so as to give the false illusion that the weather is always amazing in Oz and even if it is freezing, the cast usually have to wear summer clothes!
After all the picture taking on Ramsey Street, we headed on to the film set where we got up close and personal with the exterior sets such as Carpenters Mechanics, Grease Monkeys and even the infamous bus stop where all the cast members leave from! We also got to the Lassieters Complex with the hotel, Charlie’s Bar and Harold’s shop as well as seeing the lake and
Stingrays Wall.
It was then finally time to head back to Melbourne and to the Neighbours shop where we got to meet Nell, or the character Janelle Timmins (Stingray, Janae and Dylan’s mum) which was all very unusual but she signed postcards and took photos and seemed really nice.
Sunday morning, Lizz and I ventured down to the Sunday market’s at St.Kilda where I got to see Conner from Neighbours (from a distance, I was being nosey) and I also bought a Claddagh ring having always wanted one! We spent the afternoon chilling in the hostel with the only animation coming from Lizz screaming in the bathroom and running around cursing that she had her first grey hair. She then sat on the floor cursing how old she was getting, that she had done nothing with her life until her anger soon turned to denial.
Great Ocean Road
The alarm went off horribly at 6am this morning! We got packed up and headed downstairs for our minibus to arrive only moments later. Out jumped a lady and the cutest dog ,who we find out are our tour leader Foggy and her dog Oscar, who is
to travel with us for the day back to his grandparents house. Oscar is a cross-breed Cocker spaniel and poodle and is only 14 months old and so friendly! We spent the next hour travelling around the city picking people up whilst being trampled on by a very excited Oscar until we then started heading out of the city towards Geelong.
The first part of the journey was pretty dull and I kept drifting off to sleep, but we soon hit the coast and the roads started to wind dramatically. So as a result, I had to move into the front set next to Foggy and Oscar’s bed to stop myself from feeling sick. Our first stop was at the Great Ocean Road sign, where we also had a wander down to an amazing beach. We drove on a little further until we saw some wild Koalas and ended up going bush to try and get some great pictures.
After lunch, we carried on down to the famous twelve apostles which are essentially stacks/stumps in the ocean but are an incredible sight. Over the next few hours we had several more stops along the Great Ocean road where
we saw other coastal feature such as Caves and Arches, including Razorback Ridge and London Bridge.
Later on, once we had established that we were all rocked out, we headed to our hostel for the night in a town called Warrnambool. We had this huge 16 bed dorm to ourselves and there was a massive living area with a bar and board games! So we unpacked the van, had a beer and then had a great dinner cooked by Foggy herself of pasta bake and fried rice which Lizz and I helped ourselves to several portions of. Everything was going great until Lizz wanted to play Trivial Pursuit. Four of us started playing and two soon left leaving Lizz and myself but as I had a cheese and Lizz didn’t, we had to keep playing (Lizz is very completive and losing to me was not an option). A guy called Bailey soon joined in and within about 10 minutes already had two cheeses much to Lizz’s distress. But luckily for everyone, she soon followed with her own cheese and so I was finally allowed to leave the game. Even though I got my cheese first, Lizz constantly maintained that
she won because she answered more questions right, even though we weren’t keeping tabs and that was not the aim of the game!! Suffice to say, Trivial Pursuit is not for us!!!
The following morning was a slight lie in but it was still not quite light when we had to get up. Today we were to head off to the Grampian Mountain Range and away from the coast. Our first stop was at the Brambuk cultural centre, which was really interesting but like most Aboriginal stuff, tinged with sadness. Whilst everyone was still looking around, I decided to head off on a small walk away from the centre and soon enough encountered a huge heard of Kangaroos. I had to go bush for a while to get a good picture but I ended up getting so close and countered up to 30 of them before they were chased away by three angry looking Emus.
Our second stop was up at Reed Lookout to get a view of the Grampians. Lucy, Lars, Karina and I all did some mountain climbing to get the best shots whilst Lizz just shouted that we were all crazy. Lunch stop was at
the MacKenzie Falls which required a walk (or run) down 260 steps to get to the bottom but then you have to do the same back up which almost killed me! We next had our Mountain hike up a place called Hollow Mountain. Well, not so much of a hike, it was more of a mountain climb with lots of scrambling on your hands and knees over rocks to reach the 350m summit. Lucy and I managed to get up in about 30mins and got to appreciate the view until Lizz arrived who had, according to Foggy, been the funniest person ever to climb the mountain with. Lizz sat slightly below us on the summit, complaining that this walk should be illegal before we started going back down. Heading down was easier save for a few slippery sections but Lizz found it much worse! We waited at the bottom for her and sure enough, she turned up with a queue of school kids behind her. But we had completed it, that was the main thing and with a fear of heights, it was the biggest achievement for Lizz.
It was then straight onto our hostel in Narancourt with a
minor stop at a Kangaroo sign and a minibus party (they were balloons and banners and even writing on the windows!) And then we got a three course meal with Roast Lamb cooked by the owners of the hostel and the owners of Go South tours. We then sat in our cosy little room and watched a random film called Eulogy, which turned out to be crazily funny. It was about this dysfunctional family attending their fathers funeral and had some very comic moments in for example, when the grandsons end up blowing the casket out of the water rather than gently setting the boat alight in accordance with the grandfathers wishes. But don’t feel too bad for him, turns out in his will he leaves a video saying that he was not a hard working travelling salesman but actually had three other families around the US.
Down into the Earth we go
Our first activity the following morning involved us travelling down to some nearby caves to go caving. We got to have a look around the information centre first before being escorted off to gear up. Here we got given the full shebang: overalls, knee
pads and a helmet with a light on which Lizz claims has always been one of her lifelong ambitions to wear. We then headed off down into the caves and got to try several challenges first so that Jenny, our tour guide, could see how competent we were. There was only one Lizz and I could not do and that was mostly because we didn’t believe that our hips and bums would ever fit through the gap (naturally everyone else were sticks)!! We next went deeper into the cave though only reaching about 20m underground. Travelling through the caves was an interesting experience. At times it was horribly claustrophobic, especially when you’ve followed someone into a tiny space and your stuck on your stomach unable to move until the person in front of you has done so. Only once did I get myself into an almost panicky position due to slipping feet but I eventually made it back into crawling space. Our last mission before we left the caves involved us all switching our lights off and crawling in darkness along to the exit. It was absolutely hilarious. We had no idea where we were going, save for feeling along
the wall and listening to the people in front of you. And then we happened to crawl through lots of mud which Jenny didn’t foresee so we got horribly dirty. But all in all a good laugh.
Once we resurfaced, we got cleaned down and headed back to the hostel to pick up our gear. We also said goodbye to Foggy as Dave, the owner of GoSouth tours, was driving us on to Adelaide. Before we missioned it across though, we had a brief stop at a Winery in South Australia. We pulled up to the most beautiful looking building, all excited about wine tasting when we saw a tiny Jack Russell with a little puppy and all the excitement was lost to the dogs. The puppy was called Midge as he had been the runt of the litter but he was the most adorable creature in the world. So in between playing with the dogs, we tasted some wine. Some were nice, but they were mostly red and Shiraz’s which I really don’t like.
We then hopped back into the bus for the last time and drove the remaining three hours up to Adelaide. The hostel in
Adelaide, Cannon Street Backpackers was a dive but at least they gave us free Apple Pie every night. The beds were so uncomfortable that you could feel all the metal slabs beneath your back!
The next day, Lizz and I hopped on the free bus around the city and went for a wander through the Botanical Gardens (some nice features but not as impressive as Sydney or Perth). We then whet for some food along the famous Rundle Street and saw Angels and Demons at a nearby cinema. By the time we came out, it was 6pm and everything was closed! So we walked back to our Hostel, getting only mildly lost along the way.
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Sian
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Lol i am literally wetting myself at parts of this Soph!! I like how i get the blame 2 the flat - it's not like i wanted to leave Oz!! Have images of Lizz having a tantrum of her grey hair (which i imagine is plural now lol!!) and miss u guys heaps!! xx