Great Ocean Road

I've run out of steam a bit and am trying to write this up a while after the fact so bear with me...

The Great Ocean Road, a brilliant end to the Lemmie and Loonie adventure that started on May 20th with a Sail & Rail ticket from Dublin to London. We left Adelaide on September 16th and pulled into Melbourne on September 20th bringing our 4 month adventure to a close.

The trip involved hiring a campervan in the form of a Spaceship (spaceships.tv). A bright orange, automatic transmission beast - a modified Toyota Estima. I was nervous about driving it having never driven an automatic before and the only car I've really driven being my little Micra at home, but I stood up to the challenge well and got us through the journey in one piece with the only casualty being the poor green parrot who walked into the path of the tyre as I tried to dodge it on the road to Mount Gambier on Day 1. It was a dark moment for me..I've never run over anything before :(

So....we took off from Adelaide and drove to Mount Gambier on Day 1 with very little stops because it was raining so much. We pulled into the carpark of the oval there and cooked up our beef stirfry in the pouring rain on our little camping stoves before settling in for the night and watching a crappy DVD about partying in Cancun.

Day 2 saw us move from Mount Gambier to Warrnambool with a good few stops along the way to check out the lookouts and sites along the way.

Day 3 had us move on to Cape Otway, a little ways short of our target of Apollo Bay but a worthy diversion. The road to get to the Cape was like something from the Blair Witch Project...pitch black, deserted, surrounded by tall forests and very scary. The whole thing was made a bit more freaky by Una trying to scare me senseless and having a moment where the only car we came across was a few hundred metres shy of the campsite we were headed for...about 30 seconds after it passed us blinding lights appeared in the rear-view mirror and I was convinced some mass murderer had spotted us and done a u-turn to come get us..thankfully my imagination was just working overtime! The campsite had the best bathroom block of any I've seen to date...I regret not taking a photo!

Day 4 was a monster drive day because we got a bit lost in Geelong. We had hoped to stay there for the night before moving on to Melbourne but couldn't find anywhere suitable to pull up. Then the signposts stopped making sense and we were lost in the middle of housing estates. The only way out of it (considering we didn't have a road map to great enough detail, any printed directions or a sat nav) was to follow the signs to the only place I recognised the name of - Ballarat...an hour and a half from Geelong. Not exactly the end to the day I was hoping for as my eyes were already glazing over as we approached Geelong!

The last day was a pretty excellent one. We explored Ballarat and went to Soverign Hill where they've got a gold mining town with period costumed staff for you to explore. Well worth the entrance fee, though it would have been great to have had longer there..but...we needed to get on the road to Melbourne in time for me to get to the airport to welcome Conor who was arriving to start a 6 week adventure with me, and get Una in town early enough to get to the YHA before it got too dark.

It was a day of mixed emotions..the end of an era, the start of a new chapter. Very weird to say our goodbyes at the airport..but we'll be reunited soon enough at home with enough photos, stories and memories to bore all of you to death!