New Year's Eve in Oz

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Drove to Mount Eccles National Park. The drive there was some of the best of the Great Ocean Road so we made sure we stopped at most of the view sites. The 12 apostles are rock formations that stand tall in the sea and were incredible to see. The coastline is beautiful. The weather, however, remained windy and cold.

We found our campsite in the park with no trouble. This was to be our first proper bush camp and it was beautiful. There were very tall trees, individual camp sites, most with a fireplace. You have to take all of your water to these sites, none of them have drinking water and many have no water at all.

We had a couple of koalas in the trees above us and we saw kangaroos hopping through the site so were happy.

We had planned a really nice New Year’s eve supper and Dave was cooking a potjie on the fire (that’s a sort of stew in a big black cast iron pot on legs).

It was at this point that we noticed our neighbours - quite a large crowd of youngsters - were getting rather noisy. We didn’t mind too much to start with as it was a party night anyway. We saw in the New Year at midnight and because of the time difference knew that we could go to bed and get up the next morning before we had to celebrate New Year in South Africa and UK.

The neighbours showed no sign of getting any quieter and were making the most awful racket. Not just music and talking, but screaming and shouting, really way over the top. There were lots of people walking up and down with torches looking, but it appears that no-one says anything - I wonder why. Because it is a bush site there is no-one to tell them to be quiet and we wondered if that is why they go there.

The next day it was showery and cold so we drove to the lake in the park but the thought of a 2 hour walk around it was not very appealing. The park is inside an old volcano so it is quite interesting - but not in the rain!

As there were no showers we had to try and work out how to use Kerry’s solar shower and the shower tent. We got the water nice and warm, had the tent up but there was nowhere to hang the shower so we had to take it in turns to hold for each other. It was a bit difficult to start with but we soon learned how to do it.

We were booked for the light and laser show at Flagstaff Hill in Warnambool so made our way into town and had supper at a very expensive restaurant. It was a very nice place and had a lovely view of the sea but the food was a bit fancy - not too much of it - and they charged another 15% because it was a public holiday! Apparently that is general practice here.

The light and laser show starts with a short film telling the story of a ship that sets sail from England to Australia. When it gets to within a day of Australia it sinks just off the Warnambool coast and there are only 2 survivors. You then get taken by carriages to where the light show will take place. There is a small lake over which is projected the pictures of the ship and sea. The seats shake and rain falls - we had enough of the real stuff anyway - and you get the feeling that you are actually on the ship. It was quite a good show.

We took a wrong road going home - there are some pretty small roads around - and got back about midnight. The neighbours were almost as noisy as the night before!

Next morning we awoke to rain - again. We packed up between showers and set off for Mount Gambier. We stopped at the blue lake - which was indeed very blue - and then found a pretty picnic spot to have our lunch.

As the weather was still quite bad and we had found out that Adelaide was having lovely hot and sunny days, we made the decision to return to Adelaide and go in the opposite direction to try and find some better weather.

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