Walking into McDonald's and asking them if they serve burgers has not been one of my finest moments, yet it lives as a reminder of a brilliant night out don't you think? I should start at the beginning: Our Adelaide 'morning after' did not start well with my creeping out early (11am ish) and Lou 'finding' my empty bed. Apparently she had to go on a massive search for me, which consisted of the Internet cafe and then finding me in the hairdressers - Super detective Lou! Having my hair chopped off delighted the hairdresser, but I did feel a little bad for her when Lou 'found' me and was like 'OH MY GOD WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!' I don't think that is the usual response to a haircut but least it was followed up with compliments! After the haircut was the MacDonald's incident (less said about that the better) and the day was meant to be spent on the beach, however it was really cold (about 22!) and we were really hungover so we pretty much spent the whole day in bed :)
Our alarm was set for an early start the next morning as we were hopping onto another bus heading to Sydney. As mentioned before Lou is in charge of the time/phone/alarm and always asks me what time we should wake up. Guaranteed I will say a time and she will set it 15mins earlier so we can have a 'lie in'. Our catch the bus day was no different. The only downside to this plan was that Lou presumed (silly billy) that I read the pick up time correctly. Checking things like this whilst in the cab and being 20 minutes late is not fun. For some reason I was sure we were meeting at 6.50, yet the darn little piece of paper said 6.30 - big oops on my part. After frantically calling the bus company and being told 'the bus will wait for no-one' we headed straight to the head office to meet it there. Luckily for us (well mainly me as I had messed up) the bus was running late too. Lesson for the day: I say the pick up time and then Lou checks it.
Being the last on the bus we had the back seat which was the worst as we couldn't hear anything our tour guide Shelley said (we later realised that this was a blessing as she got over excited whenever she saw any type of animal and would scream the animal name whilst slamming on the breaks!) Anyways some familiar faces in the form of Natalie, Marcel, Adrian and Fernando from our other tours faced us on the bus which was cool and we soon settled into the journey. So our journey to Melbourne had began. We started off by heading into the Grampians, a mountain range, and our first walk. We got all geared up for our walk but then the heavens opened and a few of us decided that it was too cold and rainy to climb the mountain so we sat and waited in the bus for hours. At this point our British nature had escaped us. And weren't we glad about it when the others arrived back on the bus soaked through and teeth trembling. That night after everyone had dried off and warmed up we had Lou's favourite spag bol and an early ish night. An eventful day of mishaps!
Our Great Ocean Road trip began with a clear blue skies...behind the clouds that lurked. It was cold. Many of us felt cheated by the cold weather as somewhere in a travel brochure in our rooms back home it said that December was the start of summer. Well sorry Australia you promised sunshine so it was only fair that it had to put up with the same winter outfits for 3days in a row. My look consisted of leggings and a hoodie and Lou embraced the jean hoodie combo. Along the Great Ocean road we stopped and saw many of it's famous sites such as London Bridge (looks like a bridge) Mackenzie Waterfalls (alot of steps were climbed today) and the 12 Apostles (they lie, there are only 8 now.) We did great impressions of tourists, jumping out of the bus, whipping our jumpers off (if we were brave), taking photos with Natalie's amazing camera that made it look hot and then jumping back on the bus again! That night we headed back out to the 12 Apostles for sunset which was amazing as the sun and clouds worked together to give us some great Kodak moments. At this point Australia was forgiven for it's coldness and simply admired.
The next day we were back on the road and Melbourne bound. Along the way we stopped off at Kennett River for some wild Koala spotting. We were rewarded with baby Koalas hiding in the trees with their mums. Shelley also gave us some bird feed for the brightly coloured birds that hung out in the same trees. Yes I now may seem stupid but whilst gazing up at the Koalas thinking they had it pretty good (love the idea of all that sleep) I kinda forgot I had two handfuls of bird seed in my hand. I was rudely reminded when a bird swooped down and attacked me. Later it was mentioned that the bird simply landed on me. But at the time I felt under attack! Soon the whole group had birds all over them and many photos were snapped. Lou even had one land on her head which she loved until I pointed out it might think her head was a toilet! After the walking in the shoes of Dr Doolittle for a while we were back on the bus for the long stretch towards Melbourne.
We arrived in Melbourne and checked into our hostel and settled for an early ish night as surprise surprise we had an early morning wake up. That night was possibly one of the worst nights sleep we both had. The guys in our room were out partying and seemed to lost the ability to move around quietly when they returned. They also seemed to forgot to close the door whilst using the bathroom. And at one point the guy above Lou was coughing so much he sounded like he was going to be sick onto Lou's bag on the floor below - nice! She also had the squeakiest bed ever. On one of his many trips to the bathroom the guy above lou (we shall call him GAL now) obviously left his bed empty. However upon returning to it he realised someone else had climbed into it. GAL was not impressed and started to kick up a fuss. The guy sleeping by the door (DG) took charge and turned the light on. After a quick head count we realised there were 9 people in a 8 bed dorm. A drunken guy had somehow got into our room and commandeered GAL's bed. DG did a fine job of shepherding him out and we all finally got to bed. It was 4am. Our alarm went off at 5am. We woke. We weren't quite. We didn't care. Since this night we have been asked 'what did you think of Melbourne?' To be fair we didn't really see it but we still just shake our heads and recall the worst night (so far!)
Hope this little snippet sheds some light on a teeny bit of our travels.
Also Happy Birthday week to my lovely brothers. Man your both getting old! Which must make mum and dad feel even older!
Much love
Steph and Lou x x x
p.s. yes I know I used 'this' alot - but I like it ok!
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