What a ‘Hopping’ great start to Australia...

 Woah – what an eventful, fun and random 2 weeks we have had in Australia.  We landed in Sydney pretty knackered from all our World Cup antics and we knew we were going to be back in Sydney in Dec so we said we would take it slightly easy for a few days......however I seem to have been infected by the Keith Jess problem of not being able to sit still as 2 days and about 12kms walked later we had seen most of the city sites!  Sydney is such an impressive city and the place has such a great vibe about it, we loved seeing all the commuters walking to and from the big companies etc.  I went back to being boring and did some Big 4 spotting – although in Sydney they are hard to miss with great locations right on the waterfront!  The weather wasn’t great so we didn’t bother with Bondi and Manly...we have those to look forward to in December.  We have ticked off Darling harbour, Sydney Harbour bridge, Sydney Opera House, Sydney Aquarium, Botanic Gardens, George Street and Pitt Street!

So we decided that rather than flying from Sydney to Melbourne we wanted to take our time and drive down what the locals call the route less travelled.  We hired a ‘campervan’ called Murgatroyd the spaceship which was basically a people carrier with the seats taken out of the back and replaced by a bed - trust me it was cosy!!  It was a great adventure and we were really pleased that we did it.  

Our chef!!

Tired chef haha!

We tried to stop in lots of little towns along the way – one of the best was a place called Eden where we saw whales off the coast.  

You will just have to trust me on this one - that is a whale tale!!

We also stopped at Lakes Entrance were we saw the biggest birds ever...storks apparently!  These were the little bonuses that we were excited for by having the independence of driving rather than flying.  We tried to free camp as much as possible along the way to keep the costs down...the downside of this is no showers so we were pretty smelly ha! 

One of the big highlights and will probably be one of the best parts of our trip so far was an overnight visit to a place called Wilsons Promontory which is a national park at the southern most point of Australia.   The place is famous for its beautiful walks in tropical rainforests and white sandy beaches.  It is so popular with locals for Christmas they have to have a ballot to see who ‘wins’ a space on the camp site a year in advance.  The scenery was absolutely breathtaking but it is also famous for its wildlife.   We spent the afternoon doing one of their recommended walks called the Lilly Pilly Gully walk which was 7kms through the rainforest and around the headland.  It was gorgeous and we were really lucky with the weather.  We saw lots of bird life and wild cockatoos and parrots, then on the way back we saw wombats which the locals consider a bit of a pest as they try to burrow through the tents to get to food. 

View from our walk - stunning!

At the highest point of our walk - we started at the bottom!!

A wombat!

One of the gorgeous beaches!

Happy travellers!

The next morning before leaving we did a recommended wildlife walk...this is where all my Australian ambitions came true!! We saw loads of Kangaroos just hopping around – it was amazing I loved it!! Also on this same walk we saw Emus.  It was fantastic to see them in the wild jus chilling with their families etc, of course I took about a million pictures so this is only a small sample!! If anyone is coming to Melbourne taking a day trip to Wilsons Prom is very worth it – we spoke to alot of locals who were so pleased we had come as they say alot of travellers miss out on it!  It has been one of my favourite things so far.

hop hop hop!!!

Mr Emu

Me being a plonker!! love it!

Me and Mr Roo

We covered a huge amount of kilometres nearly 1,800kms over 5 days but it was so worth it to see all the cool things we saw.  Our next stop for 2 days was the Great Ocean Road which was gorgeous.  We stopped at all the touristy spots for some pictures including Bells Beach, Memorial Arch, Apollo Bay, Otaways lighthouse, 12 apostles, Lough Ard Gorge and London Bridge.  Each one has a different historical tale to tell and we were quite lucky with the weather while we were there – I am lucky enough that I will be back here with my family in a couple of months so I get to enjoy all the scenery again.  It seems to have been a wildlife filled few days as on this drive we saw Koalas just hanging out in the trees along the road – of course we stopped for a touristy snap!!

Bells beach

The 12 apostles

Me practising my jumping for the wedding!!

Next stop was Melbourne for a few days flying visit.   There isn’t as much touristy stuff here as Sydney but its still a very cool cosmopolitan city.  We visited the Australian Moving image museum which is a free museum showcasing all the tv shows, films and computer games which were made here – it is surprising just how many including Sega Mega Drive, Nintendo etc!! I had to go away for a while and come back and get James later he was having such fun!! In the meantime I managed to get a free Sally Hansen manicure!! There were so many people around the city and so much advertising and promotions etc as it was Melbourne cup week while we were there – it’s a National holiday in Australia so they take it pretty seriously.  We did a city walking tour which was really interesting and told of the origins of Melbourne and took us to some of the less recognised areas of Melbourne.  We visited the MCG which is massive – holding 100,000 people.  Within the ground of the National Sports Museum which we both really enjoyed – they are so proud of their achievements over the years.

We spent 2 nice evenings with our friends from New Zealand who have set up home in Melbourne and found jobs so they had us round for a bbq one night and the second night we went out to a nice bar on the waterfront.  They are living in St Kilda which is a beachside suburb of Melbourne so we just jumped on the tram out to visit them.  It was great to catch up and we were a little jealous that they have finally managed to unpack their bags!!

St Kilda at sunset

A few drinks with our NZ pals!

Our next stop is up in Cairns were we will start the final part of our big adventure.  We collect a new campervan (slightly bigger this time) which we will have for 3 weeks to travel from Cairns (north) to Brisbane.  I cant wait to just park up on the beach and just chill...we have also booked our Whitsundays sailing trip so we have that to look forward to on the way down the coast.

We will continue to blog as much as possible – mainly availing of the McDonalds free wifi options as the campervan doesn’t come equipped with internet sadly!! These 10 days have been so filled with new and interesting things that I cant wait to see what the next few weeks hold.

I hope that everything at home is going well – it is so hard to believe that it is November already.  You will all be pleased to hear that Santa is alive and well as he arrived in Melbourne this weekend – yes you don’t have to reread that Santa arrived in central Melbourne shopping mall on the first weekend of November in 29 degrees – so strange!!!

xxx