The South West

After saying farewell to Tanya we headed south toward Margaret River (another wine region) where we had booked ourselves on a wine tour. We stopped off at Freemantle on the way there. Our wine tour was loads of fun! We visited 4 wineries and had a gourmet lunch at one which included Kangaroo (yummy but seems wrong!) and Witchety Grub paste which was actually quite nice and it was easy to eat as it looked like hummus! We also went to a chocolate factory, a cheese factory and a brewery. Our guide brian was very funny and informative and all in all we had a great day out and met loads of interesting people.

After Margaret River we went to look at a cave, then stopped off at Hamlin Bay where we saw some massive stingrays right on the shore. After that it was Pemberton where we visited some of the national parks, it's all forests with really tall trees. We climbed one of them, the Gloucester tree which is 60m tall, was a bit scary (there were steel pegs inserted into the trunk to make a kind of ladder) but well worth it. We also went on a little tree tops walk in the Valley of the Giants. Next we visited an Alpaca (sort of like a Llama) farm where we saw Koalas, Kangaroos, Emus, a Dingo, a Camel and a South American Bison as well as the usaul farm type animals. That was pretty cool, and I managed to get up close to one of the Koala's and stroke him, he was still half asleep, they sleep for 20 hours a day, that's nearly as much as Rich (tee hee!!) So, been a bit hectic over last few days, good job we had that long rest in Perth!!

Next stop was Albany where we've just been chilling on the beach this morning and that's where we are now. We're heading up North next, to the Ningaloo reef so got quite a lot of driving in front of us before we get there!

Perth

So, we arrived in Perth and met up with Tanya who very kindly put us up in her apartment. That was really nice. After living in a tent for the last month it was a real luxury to have an apartment to stay in. It was right by the beach in a place called Scarborough. We stayed in Perth for almost a week and I have to say we did make the most of having an apartment with a DVD player!! We hired all the episodes of Lost that we hadn't seen and spent an awful lot of time in front of the TV....sad I know, but we enjoyed it!! We did do some other stuff in Petrth too, mainly involving food and wine! On one evening we went to an art gallery where Tanya's friends brother was having an exhibition, some pretty cool stuff there but nothing we could afford, and afterwards went out for a meal with Tanya's friends. We spent a bit of time at the beach, had a look around Perth city and went on a wine tour of the swan valley region, which was nice.

We got drunk a lot with Tanya and her friend Phil and had a really good time with them just hanging out and stuff. So, while we didn't actually do much in Perth, we really enjoyed it! Sorry, didn't take many photos!

The Nullabor

Next part of our plan was to head to Perth where we were going to meet up with an Aussie called Tanya who we also met in Fiji. However, Perth is a fooking long way (about 3000km) and would mean crossing the Nullabor (means no trees in Latin). So obviously it was gonna be a long drive! The starting point if you like for the Nullabor was a place called Ceduna. It took us about 2 days to get there, through little tiny towns which seemed to have no people! Ceduna wasn't much busier, that was a small place with not much going on. So we camped there and headed for the Nullabor the folllowing day. After a couple of hours of driving we took a detour to a place called Cactus Beach which is a popular surf beach, but only for the hard core though as the surf gets very big and of course there's always the risk of a shark attack. To get there though we had to drive down a dirt track 21km long which was the worst unsealed road we've encountered, it was a right bone shaker and Rich nearly lost it a couple of times! There was a very pretty pink lake there though, although it doesn't look very pink on the photos but trust me, it was VERY pink! Something to do with the micro organisms that live in it! After that we set off for the South Australia / Western Australia border (our target for the day). We stopped off to marvel at the great Australian Bight which is where the sea meets the south coast and there is 2000km of 90m cliffs, no beaches or anything, just sheer drops, looks pretty awesome! We finally arrive at the border after a full days driving down straight flat roads that seem to never end. Contrary to the name though, Nullabor does have trees, if bush like trees, but it is very deserted. Didn't see a single live Kangaroo (they're only really active at dawn and dusk and didn't want to risk driving at those times in case we hit one. Apparently they are really stupid and are attracted by the lights of the vehicles, but will make a right old mess of your car if you hit one!) but loads of dead ones at the sides of the road! We'd driven about 500km that day and decided to treat ourselves to a cabin at the roadhouse at the border instead of putting our tent up!

Next day it was much of the same, driving driving driving on the long straight road. There's a part of it which is the longest peice of straight road in Oz (146km) and you could probably drive it with your hands behind your head, if only the road wasn't so rough and our car didn't pull to the right! Anyway, it was a long old drive with not much to look at, although we did spot a couple of emu's by the side of the road, but couldn't get a picture, Rich chased them into the bush with the camera but they were too quick for him! We did a million crosswords to pass the time, drank 250 litres of water and finally reached the end (Norseman) early evening (we'd gained 2.5 hours as we'd moved into a different time zone!) We'd driven over 800km that day! We were going to spend the night in Norseman but just before the end of the nullabor (about 80km) we saw a place in the bush where we could camp for free. We really (well I did!) wanted to do this as we may have been able to see Kangaroos around then at dusk and dawn and maybe some emus and other interesting wildlife. But no, did we 'eck as like. What we saw was 50000000 mosquitos and flies! I got absolutely bitten to fook! My bum is just a mess of red lumps, there must've been a gang of them in my sleeping bag! So our bush camping experience was a bit of a nightmare in the end. Even more so by the morning when I got dihorrea and had to 'go' in the bush about 7 times before we could even think about leaving! Thinking about it, that was probably when the mozzies got my bum!

When we could leave finally we headed for Perth via Esperance where we chilled out by the beach, did some washing and stuff and gave the car a bit of a rest!

The journey from Esperance to Perth was about 800km...piece of cake now! We drove (I say we, I mean Rich, he did the whole lot, wouldn't let me drive, think this has something to do with the speed!) all day, stopping off at Wave rock (oddly, it's a rock that looks like a wave!) and a dog cemetery! Again, we did crosswords and drank water and finally arrived in Perth around 6pm. Wahey, Perth! It's about 4000km from Melbourne to Perth, a bloody long way, but still only a smidgen of Australia. Driving in a straight line in one direction for 4-5 days really does give you a sense of how bloody big this country is.

Adelaide and around

As usual when we're in a city we spent our time shopping, eating out and drinking! Not a bad thing really though, we had a couple of days of this in Adelaide then headed to a seaside town not far called Glenelg. This was a nice little place, they had a museum type place called the Rodney Fox Shark Experience, which, you guessed it was about sharks! Rodney Fox was a guy who was bitten quite badly by a great white in the 70's, he's extremely lucky to have survived it and ever since he has devoted his life to the research and conservation of sharks, was all very interesting. We went and chilled out on the beach after that and had planned to go for a swim but after everthing we'd just seen we were a little too scared as there were great whites in these waters, there'd been 71 fatal shark attacks there in 2005! Scary stuff!

After that we headed north of Adelaide to a wine region called Barossa Valley. It's home to Jacobs Creek and there are around 75 wineries in the region.

We found a nice campsite that did bike hire and set about cycling around a few vineyards. Now, after the first one we were pretty pissed as they had 18 wines to taste, and we went through them all! The next one we only tasted a few and met some nice ladies there who donated their leftover platter to us! By the third one it was all a blur, we met a canadian couple and an american couple and went with them to Chateau Tanunda vineyard to play croquet! Now, croquet always looked like a dull old ladies game, but it really is quite fun! We liked it so much we decided to have another day of tasting and start there first as we didn't have time to taste their wine. Surely enough, next day we set off to the Chateau Tanunda, tasted their wine played croquet....lovely. It all gets a bit messy after that...again, as we went round a few more. At one place they had this delicious chocolate port and the guy there invited us to the quiz at the local pub the following evening....guess we'll have to stay another day then....it's a hard life. Along the way we met a guy called Nikhal who was both and neither American and English....work that one out if you can! He was cool and we had dinner with him that night and arranged to meet him the following day for tasting in a different part of the region.

So, next day we met Nikhal, cycled round a different part which was hard work as it was a scorching day and there was a lot of uphil to be done. But it was all very nice, Nikhal left early to catch his train to Perth and Rich and I carried on and got bladdered! Later that evening we went to the pub for the quiz only to find out we were too late, guess we forgot the details! Nevermind, we chatted with the locals and ended up going back to this guy, Micks house where we listened to his 70's music collection and watched the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Finally we staggered back about 5am!

So, big thumbs up for Adelaide and the Barossa Valley in particular which is a really pretty region and the wine / food / locals are great!

The Great Ocean Road........

Since the first time we tried to drive the Great Ocean Road, Rich drove and I looked out the window, it was only fair that I drove the second time. This was a bit scary for me as it was an automatic and I'd never driven one of those before, but after practising in a car park (as you do!) I found it to be easy peasy! So I drove Rich along the Great Ocean Road, then we stopped for the night in Princeton, not far from the 12 Apostles (big rock stacks in the sea). We'd heard that the best time to see these was sunset and sunrise. We thought sunset would be a bit shit as it'd been a really overcast day and not even seen the sun, but as we sat eating our noodles at the campsite, we could see it was going to be a corker, so we dashed (I was still eating my noodles en-route!) over to the viewing place to get some great sunset piccies. But by the time we found how to get to the veiwing platform it was all too late! Bugger. So we decided to get up really early and catch it as sunrise the next day....

...and we did, believe it or not, we were up at 5 and there waiting before 6am. However, the sunrise was no where near as dramatic as sunset so was a bit of an anti climax. Hey-ho, we were up early though and that was a bonus. We hit the road after breakfast bound for Adelaide (or as close as we could get before getting too tired). We stopped along the way to look at a beach and some more rock stacks and the like, but pretty much just drove.

AT 7.30pm, at least 800km's later we arrived in Adelaide! Rich drove all the way, didn't want me to drive, so he did really well, although as soon as we stopped he realised how knackered he was!! The car did really well too! So, fingers crossed it should be sweet to get us all the way round and back to Melbourne.

So folks, the blog is bang us to date now, as Adelaide is where we are now (Friday 3rd Feb), having arrived last night. We'll try and keep on top of it from now on, promise ;-)