Simon & Caroline's World Tour 07/08

The aptly named Seal Rocks lay just further out to sea, and whilst not visible to the naked eye, telescopes (or my supremely powerful zoom lens on the new camera, which I'll now stop going on about) revealed that hundreds of seals were basking, or doing whatever seals do, out there.

With our fill of marine life, Dromana on the Mornington Peninsula was the next stop, in view of Melbourne over the bay. Whilst trying to find the campsite entrance we almost drove into a huge car park with big white screens, a drive in theatre of all things! Returning later that night (with a freshly cooked dinner waiting to be eaten) we were treated to not one but two films. There was even an American diner, albeit an early closing one, but alas no roller skating waitresses to be seen.

It's been a good while since we were in a city, having bypassed Sydney on the way down, Brisbane was the last urban stop, and that was when we were still heading north. So with the roads getting busier, and too many lanes to choose from, there was the feeling that maybe after all this rural living we weren't cut out for city life, or it could just be that Friday afternoon roads aren't the best way to appreciate a city! We'll find out in a couple of weeks when we return to Melbourne sans campervan.

The morning started with a chill in the air, a reported 9 degrees, which is probably the first time we've been in single figure temperatures for a while. But, as they say in Victoria, if you don't like the weather wait 10 minutes, and true to form there was soon a bit of heat from the sun.

The Great Ocean Road was built after the First World War as a memorial to the soldiers, and a mighty fine memorial it is too. The huge sandstone cliffs have been carved away with pick and shovel (although I'm convinced they must have used explosives, or at least gone through quite a few shovels) to create what must be one of the finest tourist routes around. An attempt to find waterfalls proved futile, as there hasn't been too much rain recently. However there were scores of sulphur crested cockatoos flying around Teddy's Lookout in Lorne to keep us entertained, and even kangaroos in the distance to provide Dad with his first glimpse of them, although they were so far away we're not sure it really counts.

Goal for the day was the Twelve Apostles for sunset, a set of twelve rock columns eroded away by the sea, so much so that some are now submerged. We'd also like to know what an apostle is - closest we got was a disciple, but that's not a definitive answer. As the sun set we were treated to the beautiful orange hues, and reflections of the sea. It was so good that I didn't even need to use the sunset/cheat mode on the camera (the new official standard on good sunsets).

Once the sun had dropped (along with the temperature!), a group of little penguins appeared on the beach. We had seen the many footprints leading down from the nesting sites to the sea, and were expecting a large flock to be returning. The ten or so that did appear must be the most indesicive penguins around as they made several tentative attempts to get to dry land before we gave up and retreated to the warmth of the campervan!

With that excitement over, it was back to the van to continue on, passing some more impressive formations such as the Bay of Martyrs, hardly mentioned, but just as beautiful. We ended up in Portland, not really to see the place, as it doesn't boast much more than an Aluminium smelter, but was civilization, and spared Dad my cooking for a meal out.

Also on the cape were blowholes, although not nearly as impressive as the Kiama ones, as these just blew horizontally back from a cave. The petrified forest was so realistic we were even counting the rings on the tree stumps, albeit with the nagging feeling the stumps were just a little too close together. An informative sign further on explained why, the forest doesn't actually contain any trees, it's formed by water filtering through the limestone. A fossilised forest sounds a lot more impressive though!

Apart from the obligatory photo stop at the state border signs, Mount Gambier was our first South Australia stop, where we learnt they have a weird half hour time difference, and visited the sinkhole gardens caused by a cave collapsing. The mount itself holds two massive volcanic lakes, with the imaginatively titled Blue Lake doing a good oversized impression of the crater lake from James Bond You Only Live Twice. The lucious blue water looked ripe for jumping into to escape the South Australian heat, if the cliff hadn't been so high that is.

The drive on to Robe took us on bridges over dried up river beds, dried up lakes and cows seeking shade from the blistering sun. South Australia is the driest state in the driest country in the world, and you really start to appreciate it, and that's with us in the cooler south east corner!

Beyond a doubt the highlight of the day was finding Larry the Lobster, a "big thing" as per the banana and pineapple from earlier in our trip. Larry is special though - he was originally designed measured in feet but accidentally made in metres, so he's three times bigger than expected (the photo has Caroline and Dad standing next to him, but they're just dots!), and a testament as to what can be acheived with fibreglass!

The day finished with a dip in a shady cold swimming pool, absolute bliss after the day in the van. We also managed to squeeze in an Aussie barbeque for Dad's last dinner with us, well it just wouldn't be a trip to Australia without one!

Venturing into the city in search of shops proved to be a sticky affair, the city itself looked quite relaxed, with wide streets and a huge open square in the centre, but alas not a shopping centre. Salvation was found out of town, and the air conditioning, along with a couple of ice smoothies brought our temperatures back to normal. As if the cooling retail therapy wasn't enough, Caroline had some real therapy in the form of a chinese massage to help fix the effects of 2 months of van bed.

So get in we did, at Emu Bay on the sheltered north of the island. The water for the first few steps was so hot it was like stepping into a bath, but a little further the cool water was tickling our toes. The strangest thing was that the top few inches of water remained hot whilst the bottom got icy cold, so I was walking along with hot knees and frozen feet. The rest of the afternoon was idled away, Caroline soaking and reading, and me snorkelling to pester the little sand critters, and photograph pelicans.

It all began with an early start and a drive to Seal Bay, home of the Australian fur seal. A guided tour took us up close and personal to the seals on the beach (close enough to smell their fishy breath!) Their breeding season has just finished which meant it was a pretty safe time to be so close, the bulls were past their aggressive stage and were not likely to mistake us for female seals! It also meant there were lots of cute little pups frolicking around. Some of the younger ones were still breastfeeding while the slightly older little boy seals were playing at being big boy seals with their pretend fights and chasing of the girls for kisses. The girls, of course, were playing it cool, lounging around on the beach. Si's favourite photo of the day is this young seal surfing the waves with his fin sticking out like an upside-down surf board. It was a pretty hot 45 degrees on the beach (before 11am!) so it was time to move on.

Next stop: Little Sahara, a plethora of huge sand dunes, supposedly perfect for sandboarding. But at 45 degrees that kind of energetic pursuit was not going to happen so we pootled along to Vivonne bay for a bit of a cool down in the southern ocean. This bay was voted the best beach in Australia by a professor at Sydney University. Can't have been an easy decision as we have seen a lot of impressive beaches in our time here! We got the boogie board out and had some fun cooling off when some dolphins swam along to join in the fun. So Si can now say he surfed with dolphins. I did capture this moment on film but unfortunately my photography skills were not up to scratch (I'll blame it on the new camera) and the picture is a little out of focus :(

After that excitement we headed off to Flinders Chase National park where our first port of call was Admirals Arch, an arch in the rock complete with an impressive array of stalagmites and New Zealand fur seals lounging around and enjoying a bit of shade (they have thicker fur than their Aussie counterparts from this morning, hence the reason they are found here on the shady rocks as opposed to the 45 degree heat of the beach). When Si had got the required number of seal photos (i.e. a lot) we were ready to move on to the piece de la resistance of the day; Remarkable Rocks. A group of wind sculptured granite boulders that do indeed look quite remarkable but once again I am left feeling that the Aussies lacked a little imagination when they were naming the delights of this country.

Almost finished. The original plan was to stay at Remarkable Rocks to watch the sunset but with our campsite being about 100 km away we decided to head off and instead just keep stopping the car for sunset pics. In our prior reading about KI we had been promised 'abundant' wildlife, all with slightly different island adaptations. Since we usually do quite well with our wildlife we were a little disappointed with the elusiveness of the land based wildlife here thus far (not counting the roadkill at the side of the road - that was quite abundant!). But after the beautiful deep orange sun had set and darkness had desended we began to learn why there was an alarming amount of road kill. Suddenly the wallabies and the possums became abundant, and they had no road sense what so ever. Si has to be commended for his careful driving and the fact that he managed to avoiding hitting any of these guys who seem to think it is fun to play on the road and then do the startled rabbit pose when you approach! Still no sign of a kangeroo though :(
After that long day and the long blog I bid you good night.

It then came time to say farewell to Kangeroo Island as we have a slightly bigger island to get to in a hurry. Spotting a pod of dolphins from the ferry on the way back seemed like a very fitting send off.

Another few hundred kms of hot sticky driving and we have now crossed the border back into Victoria so at least we are now in the right state to catch our ferry.

P.S. I know it's meant to bring good luck, but I don't think Si found being pooed on by a seagull so lucky!

We have become suckers for Australia's big things and so with the guidebook promising a big platypus at Latrobe, a mere 5km away, we were there. Unfortunately, the big platypus wasn't up to the usual standard of big things, it was actually disappointingly small (certainly no Larry the Lobster!). All was not lost though, a wee chat with a real Tasmanian in the Tourist info office gave us a plan of action for our nine days here and she also sent us up to a good place to spot platypuses in the wild. Despite our patient searching the platypus remained elusive for today but we have got ourselves a mission for the next eight days; to spot a platypus in the wild and a Tasmanian devil and maybe a tiger, although they may be extinct so I'm not sure we'll get lucky there.

Our plan for today was to explore the North West coast so the first port of call was Penguin. Named by some imaginative (I'm ashamed to say British) explorer who saw penguins when he first arrived here. The town has, as you might expect, made the most of it's name and every shop, cafe etc has some quirky name like The Groovy Penguin cafe, as well as some statue of a penguin. The dustbins are also quite quirky with their penguins attached to the sides and of course there was a big penguin, who was actually quite big this time!.

At Cradle Mountain, after taking a dribble of expensive fuel, we abandoned the van and shuttle-bused it to Dove Lake at the foot of the twin peaks of the mountain. The dark brown lake complements the mountain perfectly, and with the trees replaced by heather, the view of the mountain is unhindered, especially important for taking photos! Arriving a tad too late to walk up the summit track, we took the easy track around the lake then went up a steep path to Lake Wilks to get the blood flowing, and make it feel more like a hike than a boardwalk stroll.

We camped up at Rosebery, site of yet another zinc and tin mine, and also a train line that passes over the campsite but with only one train passing by as we tucked into dinner. It wasn't until lights out that the strange noises began, a cross between a bird of prey call and a cat being tortured. I'm hoping it was neither, and just the Tasmanian Devils talking to each other, after all it is how they got their devilish name.

The afternoon was a lot more civilized. Boarding a fast, slick ship we zoomed out of Strahan into the dark waters of Macquarie Harbour and through Hells Gate, named so by the prisoners on their way to Sarah Island (think the Alcatraz of Australia). The ship then motored to the Gordon River, a World Heritage site that satisfies 7 out of the possible 10 criteria required to become World Heritage listed, and joint top of the table with another site in China, so a pretty important place. It's not so hard to see why, as we cruised up the beautiful mirror smooth waters of the river, passing trees that are up to 4000 years old, and aren't found elsewhere. The area was also home to Aboriginies that were the most southerly humans and survived several ice ages (average temperature of -14), and not forgetting the unique flora and fauna that Tasmania has.

We also squeezed in a walk at Lake St Clair, a glacial lake at the back of Cradle Mountain, and Australia's deepest. It was also the end point of a 5+ day walk from the mountain, and there were plenty of walkers there to put us to shame as we set off on our 1 1/2 hour stroll. Our quest to spot a Platypus continued at the enticingly named Platypus Bay, but to no avail. The views over the lake were great though, so all was not lost.

Grandness on another scale greeted us at Hobart, with the towering Mount Wellington looming over the capital city. I say capital city in the loosest sense, as it's got that small market town/fishing port feel to it, but we did visit on a Sunday and hung around the harbour so I may be mistaken. We took a drive up Mount Wellington, for impressive views over the city and even more amazement at the steepness of the mountain that the van actually managed to get up. To make up for all that effort it was time for fish and chips from the floating chippies in the harbour!

I'll not bore you with how the huge sea cliffs (tallest in southern hemisphere) were made, but I did come away with a new respect for Albatross and Muttonbirds. The Albatross don't seem to need to flap their wings at all whilst flying, and effortlessly fly a few inches above the pounding waves. The Shy Albatross only nests in Tasmania, yet is found in all of the world's oceans, that's some serious mileage. They are also suffering from fish shortage, and it's thought we may be the last generation to see them.
The Muttonbird is also quite amazing; all Muttonbirds mate on exactly the same day, meaning all eggs hatch at the same time. When it comes to leaving the nest, the chicks spread their wings for the first time, step off the sea cliff and fly. Not only that, they continue flying non stop for 18000km. Makes the 18+ years homo sapiens take to reach independence look quite pathetic!

Next stop: Campbell Town. Really only because it's a namesake to the real one that is home, but we were pleasantly surprised to find quite a lot to this wee town. It was of course settled by Scots many years ago and for a wee town has a lot to boast about; the first telephone call in the Southern hemisphere, several bushrangers (bad people, so we won't go into too much detail about them!), a local who flew around the world in a biplane, a bridge built by convict labour in 1838 which despite an annual load of about 1,200,000 vehicles has never needed any repairs! There is more but I've been told to stop there!

It's also the last night sleeping in the van and then we have four whole nights of sleeping in a real bed to look forward to, what bliss!

The rest of our day involved a wander around Melbourne soaking up the atmosphere. After dinner we stumbled across a comedy festival. One of the comedians managed to persuade us to come to his show because it had Scottish connections and he promised to talk about something I didn't really understand (I thought he was talking about a person called Kay Lee) but he seemed so pleased with himself that I didn't want to disappoint him by admitting I'd never heard of her! Anyway it turned out to be the perfect show for us, all about movie trailers and a grandfather who was born in Ireland and moved to Glasgow. The comedian had a bit of a dodgy Irish and Scottish accent (turned out he was talking about ceilidhs!) but he was very funny and like I said the show could have been tailor made for us! Melbourne rocks so far!

Our wanders around the city parks kept us amused until dark when we headed back to the Comedy Festival (third largest in the world) and chuckled at a few British comedians before sampling some of Melbournes ales and music.

It does feel like Australia has been home for the past seven months, and we've been lucky to squeeze so much in. But New Zealand beckons, and it wouldn't be much of a World Tour if we stayed in one country!

(It also has a confusing rear tent attachment that will keep me guessing for ages, as you can see! - Si)

We did also manage to visit some of the sights though, and ventured up the cathedral tower for a view over the city, watched the chess game and listened to the buskers in the square and then got all arty with a trip around the art gallery. We haven't gone all upmarket in our touring, it's just that the only map we had was in the Cultural Christchurch guide!

I also got another very exciting purchase: a new camera! Yep, we wore another one out with all our holiday snapping. I hope you are all prepared for the number of photos you will be subjected to on our return :) Now with my new jazzy camera I can do all sorts of fun and cool things. It has settings for every conceivable photo opportunity from landscapes, portraits, a portrait against a landscape, pets, children and so on. It is great fun to play with and I now almost rival Si in the number of photos taken each day. But the best bit about it is that it is PINK! Which is great just cos it's cool but also because Si is less inclined to nick it!
After our very successful shopping trip we went off in search of something to take photos of. South of Christchurch are the Port hills where we hopped on a gondola (cable car) up to the top. We were warned about the lack of visibility at the top and it was no lie. The clouds had the hill covered and the wind literally took your breath away so the only other hardy soul, apart from ourselves, braving the elements was a hedgehog. True to form New Zealand wildlife is not as scary as the Aussie variety.

With a Mum and Ian found at the airport, we all had enough time to punt down the Avon river in Christchurch, in gorgeous sunshine - so much for those thermal undies we bought yesterday!

The amazing thing with driving in New Zealand is that you get places quicker, only because the distances are so short in comparison to Australia. In a few hours, we'd done half of our travel for the next five days, and made it to Kaikoura, site of our fun for the next couple of days.