Wednesday morning we; Peter (Brisbane), Carlene (Canada), Sarah (UK) and me, woke up early to get our rental car, a convenient Toyota Camry. The weather wasn’t too great, so it was actually a good day to have a roadtrip. After finding our way through the center of Adelaide, we headed to the Great Ocean Road. The highways were actually as I expected them to be, long, empty and straight through yellow-looking nature. Peter, the guy from Brisbane was driving the first part of the trip, which was good as I had no experience driving on the left side of the road and sitting on the right side of the vehicle. After some driving the girl from England switched and she drove for another 2 hours. Afterwards it was my turn and I was amazed how easy it actually was to drive on the left side of the road. I drove the rest of the day and just my luck, the rest of the day were all windy roads across the mountains. We came across a field full of Kangaroo’s who were eating a bit of grass where we had a little stop. Later on we had another stop at a waterfall. We stopped there for about an hour. We had a walk around the waterfalls which was pretty nice as well. In the late afternoon, around 18:00 we arrived at our hostel in Hall’s Gap. We made us some dinner and watched a movie before going to bed.
The next morning we got up early again. After breakfast we headed on to the Great Ocean Road. The scenery was changing all the time from country sites to mountain scenery. After a while we entered the Great Ocean Road. After a few minutes we saw the first scenic stops. We stopped and had a nice view. Rock formations in the ocean and the likes, really pretty. We drove along the great ocean road and stopped at the different scenic lookouts. Me and Peter drove the rest of the day to our hostel located in Apollo Bay. After arriving in Apollo Bay we went to the supermarket to buy some food. I was amazed by the collection of dutch products they were selling; Ontbijtkoek, Kletskoppen, Mergpijpjes, Bokkepootjes. This wasn’t a specialised dutch food store, but an ordinary supermarket. I bought me some ontbijtkoek and made the others taste it. They all loved it. Especially the canadian girl was addicted to it right away. The next day we bought us one ontbijtkoek each, because they ate most of mine the day before.
The final day we first drove off to a national park called tree top rainforest. In this rainforest they’ve built a large bridge straight through the forest at the level of the tree tops of the forest. It was pretty nice to see the 20 meter trees from the top instead of the bottom for a change. After an hours walk through the tree top forest, we headed on to our next stop; a koala colony. Here we were supposed to be able to watch koala bears sitting in trees right in the wild. After arriving we found them pretty quickly. A whole family of koala bears just sitting and sleeping in small trees. We made some pictures of them and of course I couldn’t resist to pet them as well. They felt really soft, quite equal to a kangaroo, but softer. I made a movie out of it again; so check that out as well! After petting the wild koala’s we headed to our last stop; a colony of wild kangaroo’s. They were supposed to be near a golf course. After arriving at the golf course, we found out the kangaroo’s were actually sitting ON the golf course. It was a really weird site to see golfers shooting balls while the kangaroo’s were standing next to them eating the grass of the golf course. Unfortunately these kangaroo’s were a little bit scared so I was not able to pet them as they jumped away as soon as you tried to walk up to them. It was still nice to see so many kangaroo’s in the wild though. After watching the kangaroo’s the trip was on to Melbourne; the final destination of our roadtrip.
We arrived in Melbourne late in the afternoon. We decided to first drive to our hostel to drop off the luggge and to check in. We had to drop off the car at the airport, as Peter had to catch his flight to Brisbane that evening since he had to work the day after.After checking in we headed into the citycenter to see a little bit of Melbourne and to have some food. We walked through Melbourne for a while and my first impression of Melbourne was a good one. The city seems really nice and it’s full of shops. I am not sure whether I like Melbourne more than Sydney, but it’s definately not a bad city.. After some Indian food we headed back to the hostel and the car to bring Peter and the car to the airport. I went together with Peter to the airport as the car was registered onto my creditcard. After waving Peter goodbye I headed back to the hostel by shuttlebus. Later that night I watched a movie and went to bed.
That’s it for now. More news soon about my adventures in Melbourne!
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