Day 88 - Melbourne

Out of all the places left on the trip, Melbourne was one that I was really looking forward to. Having lived in Sydney for the past year and a bit, one of the things that I really missed from London was small bars. New South Wales has really expensive booze licences and so the only way a pub could make money was to be about 3 floors high and fill one of them with pokie machines. Everyone we spoke to said Melbourne was the opposite. We ended up staying 4 nights so bare with me while I waffle on! ;)

When we arrived, we pretty much drove straight into town to go shopping :) I needed to go suit shopping and Jess wanted to swap her ring for a smaller size. Out of the heat, her fingers weren't quite as chubby as in Uluru! Melbourne is a cool place, with better shopping and bars than Sydney. Because of this we also went shopping the next day as well! It was also the hottest day ever in Melbourne history and hopping from air-con shop to air-con shop was definitely where the smart money was. What we didn't realise until everyone started texting us, was that the bushfires had got really bad and spread massively due to the 100km winds. Around 70 people have died and for the second time on this trip, we found ourseleves in the middle of a natural disaster.








For dinner, we planned to go to someplace recommened in the guide book, so we waltzed up without a reservation and got a table straight away. We later found out that this is one of the hardest places to get into and is booked for months. I think they took one look at me and clearly thought "this guy has money" hahahahaha and I was wearing flip-flops too. Bam! The food was lovely though.




The plan for the evening was to head to one of the areas we went shopping in and go to a bar. However, there were so many cool bars, that it turned into a pub crawl! I really wish Sydney was like this.





Next day we met up with our old producer from RSP which was cool and then checked out the museum for moving image. I had booked some open-air cinema tickets that evening in the botanic gardens and we so packed a picnic and spent the night lying on bean-bags, drinking wine and watching a documentary called Man On Wire. It was about the guy who tightrope walked between the world trade centre in New York and I would definietly recommend it!




Probably the last thing worth a mention was the chocolate cafe we went to on the last day. We had heard that these were a new thing and was super keen to try one out. Theye are just like a normal cafe but serve shedloads of chocolate things. Yum. I stuffed my face till I felt sick.

Dirty sanchez:


I don't know how, but I almost forgot to mention hiking into the burbs to check out the street where they film Neighbours. Pretty exciting stuff eh!? Well I thought so. I haven't actually watched the program for about 12 years, but it is still the same. Jess took the piss and tried to wander about the street not looking like a tourist, despite the camera, campervan and I love Melbourne t-shirt. Epic fail.
Ramsey Street:

Day 87 - The Great Ocean Road - Torquay

This bit of the road was right along the coast, so we had lovely views of the sea.

We stopped of in Lorne where Luke grabbed his board and hit the waves ( Luke is complaining that this makes him sound like a tool and he wants me to re-write it to " Luke went surfing") whereas I steared clear of the freezing water and chose to top up my tan and keep on reading " The thousand splendid suns" which was a really good read if anyone is wondering.
After Luke's successful surf we went on to Bell's Beach, which is supposed to be one the most famous surf beaches in the world and is also where Patrick Swayze catches his last wave in "Point Break". We arrived and the sea  was FLAT! We actually saw some people taking pictures of the sign saying "Bells Beach" to say they were there.

Then we went on to Torquay. By this point we didn't really care much about this place or the Great Ocean Road anymore. Instead we were getting very excited to arrive in Melbourne the next day which is something we'd been looking forward to for ages :)

Day 86 - The Great Ocean Road - Apollo Bay

Luke is complaining that my reports are too mush of a history lesson and I should write more about us. But to be honest sometimes we don't really do much other than reading, hanging out, figuring where the next super market and booze shop are and whether we need to do a washing. Exciting stuff. Ok at Mt. Gambier they had a massive jumping pillow and we jumped about on that for a bit so there you go! Luke cooked a nice meal and then we got drunk. Yay.

Anyway, the Great Ocean Road is a long curvy road that winds its way through gum tree forests along the coast between Warnambool and Torquay. There's a scenic viewing point about every kilometre from where one can marvle at the incredible coastal lime stone formations and read about the ships that have crashed or run aground along this rocky and trecherous southern end of Australia.






I admit though that after about the 8th or so time of getting out of the car looking at rock formations we started to skip a few. The road itself though was pretty cool to drive on and I think Luke was secretly dreaming about riding his bike along this windy road when he fell asleep in the passenger seat on one of the most beautiful roads in Oz.
We stayed the night in Appolo Bay where we had the biggest meal EVER. The starter was a main in itself. And even though the restaurant had a huge collection of cakes we couldn't have eaten anything after the mains if we tried. We rolled ourselves home and I can't remember much after that. I think we must have just conked out :)

Day 84 - Mt Gambier

This nice little town had been reckommended to us by someone in Adelaide. Mt. Gambier is home to several different inactive volcanos of which some of them have filled up with water to create lakes. The most impressive one is the Blue Lake, which is about two kilometres across and has the most amazing blue colour to it. The day we were there, the weather was a bit cloudy and cold but the lake was still beautifully blue:



In town there's also several sink holes which are caves which roofs have collapsed so it creates a massive hole.



This giant Lobster called Larry the Lobster was somewhere along the way. The builders read the instructions wrong and built the lobster in meters rather than feet.

Day 82 - Adelaide

I was going to bore you with more pictures of roads for days 78 - 82 but decided not to. The 1500km from Uluru down to Adelaide really weren't that exciting especially as we had already covered most of it on the way up and even then it was pretty boring... and we were looking forward to getting out of the outback and back into civilisation without flies and without red sand everywhere !

Adelaide didn't really look too exciting at first either and we were expecting something boring like Cairns. It was when we got to the town centre that we were pleasantly surprised.
Adelaide actually looks like it was a little bit of history (by Australian standards). You'll find quite old buildings - some from the 19th century others art deco - and not so many modern sky scrapers. It has lots of little sidestreets full of cute little pubs, shops and restaurants andit has a little bit of an Eurpean feel to it.




We met up with our friend Fred and also with some folks from the Rising Sun Pictures Adelaide office which was nice. And then we had the best pasta ever in charming little Italian restaurant.



At the end of our Adelaide stay we also went "swimming" with dolphins. A boat brings you out to popular dolphin hang out spots and you jump into the water holding on to a rope so you don't float away and hope and wait that a dolphin might come near. We did this jumping into the water about 5 times. The last few times I could see some dolphins swimming underwater quite near to us which was great. I realy wanted them to come very close and play but I think that's not what they neccessarily do.
Luke saw hardly any dolphins as he's blind. He is also pretty dumb as he paid $100 for this "experience", so he says. He wasn't happy. Here is his one and only photo that day of a dolphin tail:

Day 80 - We have jobs :)

Since we only have about 3-4 weeks left of our trip and the travel kitty is getting rather low we thought we should sort ourselves some work for March 2009.

So we applied to Weta and .. they gave us a job starting on the 16th March. Yay!
We heard that things at Weta are hectic and stressful already so we are fully prepared to be chained to the computer 24/7. Awesome!

Day Birthday :-) - 30 is the new 20!

Let's start at the day before my birthday.. we actually had the hottest night ever! The van didn't really cool down and I don't think we slept at all. We felt just sticky and minging and were looking forward to the one thing that had kept us going for the past one and a half weeks: The hotel with AIR CON!!! Luke had booked it for my birthday and it was the best idea ever!



So we finally arrived at Uluru and got our room keys, got to the room, put the air con on full blast and went: Aaaahhh! and cracked open some beers :)
Don't think we moved for a while.

Except to maybe admire the view from the room: Uluru (Ayres Rock) which was pretty nice too :)



So on my birthday we got up about 5 in the morning as I wanted to watch the sunrise over Uluru. And it didn't disappoint. The rock changed colours from dark blue over to red over to orange. It looked very pretty.
I also wanted to climb the rock but unfortunately the climb was closed due to strong winds at the summit. Boo!
6.30 am:

We went back to the hotel to get breakfast and also admire my present which I had gotten right after we got up. Luke has been winding me up about this for 2 months!! So it had better be good! Lol!
As we've already spent a little fortune on this trip I said I just wanted a nice hotel with air con and a book.
And this is what I got:

I unwrapped my present and it was an English Dictionary Book!! NICE!
When I said "Book" I was more thinking of at least a novel or something, but no such luck! Thanks Luke!
But wait: I opened the book and there was a massive square cut into the middle of it. In in the cut out was a box from Tiffany & Co.. Ohooohhh! :)
I got the box out and in there I found a lovely white gold ring :) Don't get ideas, it wasn't that kind of ring ;) Anyway, the ring is gorgeous and I love it. Spoilt aren't I?!






So then we embarked on walking around Uluru. The base walk is 9.4 km long and took us 3.5 hrs so you get an idea of the dimensions of that rock. It is absolutely amazing and definitely worth our massive detour and the millions of flies you have to endure.
The rock has so many different shapes from all sort of angles, huge crevices and caves, some waterholes and is just beautiful to look at. I think I took a 1000 pictures.



The little pests:
The flies like Luke's man scent:

After 3.5 hrs of walking the heat was getting to us even though we started at around 9 am, so we went back to the hotel for some cooling down cocktails ( it's my birthday, remember?!). We tried spending some time at the pool, but again the flies were just unbearable to take. So we just got more drunk on champagne and had a lovely dinner in the evening and then got some more drunk :)

My fingers swell due to the heat .. or maybe it was all the food and booze:

My sexy hobbit feet after the long walk:

Next day we drove to "The Olgas", which is a huge stone formation near Uluru and just as impressive. Though this day we didn't feel like much walking, so we literally just walked up, took some pictures and left back to the air-conditioned room :)



We also managed to do some clothes washing and hang it all up on the balcony .. as you do in a 4.5 star hotel. Spot the chavs!