Time for a road trip.. yay! Who doesn’t get excited for a road trip? We did after we got our breakdown cover sorted. Always a must for the type of car that we had bought.
If you want to find out more regarding how much we paid for the car and the process of us being able to buy it, I will be producing another blog on this. So that you have all of the information regarding what you need to do if you guys are wanting to do the same thing.
Back to the story.. Nia passed her driving test when she was seventeen years old but never actually needed a car in the UK. Therefore this was pretty much her first time driving a car since she’d got her licence. She is three years older than me which would have meant that she hadn’t been driving for six years by that point. I had got my license at seventeen also, so I had three years of experience over Nia. Just to go off topic slightly, isn’t this crazy to then think that if we rented a car I would have had to pay a young drivers fee? Even though I was more experienced? Mad right? Sorry my point to all this is that if you are in the same position as Nia was: perhaps hadn’t driven in a long time or first time driving, then Australia has big, long roads so you’ll find it very easy. They don’t have many roundabouts there which makes it even easier. Of course when you get into cities it’s a little bit more tricky, in places like this I took over the driving for that part of the journey. She did amazing, it was as though she had been driving for years after ten minutes of practice.
The Great Ocean Road; a perfect way to test drive our vehicle for a long period of time without getting too far outside of Melbourne. Just incase we were to get stuck. We started our drive West and continued to our first stop which was Torquay beach. We had a short walk before we then continued along the shores to Anglesea. This was also the first time we were testing out our camping equipment, as well as testing out all the different apps. We needed to checkout which one was going to work the best for us, which app we could use easily, and which one had the most destinations that were actually correct on it. When we arrived in Anglesea it was a lot later than we expected so we decided to pay for a slot in a camper park. Rather than trying to find our first camp spot in the pitch black. This was one of the things to consider in total cost which I went into in my other blog, because this one night alone cost us fifty-five dollars just for the slot. It was a grass patch, the only difference between this and a field down the road was… well nothing. So anyway, we were comfortable, we knew we were safe, we set up the tent and we slept our first night in it.
So Australia weather was supposed to be hot right? That’s what you see in most photos. That’s what you hear about. Australia is so hot everywhere. Well just to make you aware the very South of Victoria is not so hot. Mainly at night time between ten and four was our coldest time. The rest of the day was lovely. However, we were unprepared for this. It was all a learning curve at the time, we lasted, and we were making a list of the things we would need the next time we passed a superstore.
We were more prepped for the next night, ALDI was on route, so we stocked up on a blanket and a jumper each. Along with the necessities of hummus, chips and wine. No, no we never drunk and drove, we would just have a glass each and made sure it was early on rather than late into the night. This next free camping ground we found was right next to the Twelve Apostles with a coastal view – incredible. And we paid fifty five the night before, for what? This was perfect, a magical spot even.
The next day was the drive to Port Campbell, we didn’t go all the way to Port Fairy as you’ll discover when you drive down the Great Ocean Road, it’s all very much the same sort of thing. Quaint and quirky beach side little towns. We stopped off on route at Apollo Bay where we had a proper fish and chips, we then stumbled across a ‘locals cinema’. These towns were very derelict, there isn’t many people living there and you can imagine that the people that do live there, are just happy with their lives, but haven’t been to anywhere else. The cinema was a projector and some fold out chairs in a village hall. It was showing ‘Passengers’ though which I remember had just been released that Christmas just gone. They weren’t then that far behind with the times, the whole thing was very peculiar. After we had finished, we headed to a pub which was playing live music until late so we thought after this we should try a night sleeping in the car just to try it out. Actually, not too bad.
Continuing our drive, we went to Kennett River and this was a very exciting day. This was the first day that we saw a wild koala bear. KOALA BEAR! It just walked across infront of us and up a tree, and then just sat there, very chilled. Amazing. We drove up into the mountain, had a picnic (this was also a time to get used to the shove we had, how much gas it used up, what food to cook, time, etc). We found a free campsite to have a wash at. Before driving back towards Melbourne. The Great Ocean Road is full of different viewpoints to stop off at along the way, usually from the road they are sign posted as well so it makes the whole journey quite plan free. We passed by Anglesea and Torquay again, and we camped halfway between there and Melbourne, so we didn’t have a very long drive the following day to get back.
Once we woke up it was a short drive to Melbourne as planned, and remember the group of three English girls that we met in Asia from ‘the Group’? Well, it turns out they had arrived into Melbourne a couple of days before we got back from our road trip. Bizarre.
We spent one extra week in Melbourne, before we were then confident enough and packed up enough to continue our drive up the East Coast of Australia. We then had gaven ourselves just over two months to do the whole drive in between here and Cairns. We spent this week catching up with these girls, going out for drinks, going to the beach, going out for dinners, we also spent time in the flat with Ellie (and partner) as well. Lots of evenings I remember with wine and cheese and BBQ’s. Nia and I had a girly evening in, when the pair went out, and watched fifty shades (number one).. it will come up later in the series. Tennis was a big thing in Melbourne and there was a tournament on at the time where the city had set up screens for people to sit, drink and watch. Don’t ask me what tournament it was I have no idea, not a tennis fan, but am a drinking-in-the-sun fan. By the time we’d done all that the week had passed. This was actually the final goodbyes this time to the girls. Then off we went.. Lake Entrance first stop, here we come.
LEAH HANCOX 