Two drifters off to see the world. . .

After arriving at the Avalon airport outside of Melbourne around lunchtime, we picked up our rental car, and set out to drive the Great Ocean Road. The 273km Great Ocean Road was built by 3000 returned servicemen as a war memorial for fellow servicemen who had been killed in the First World War. This is what we did and saw along the way…

Day 1:

• First stop was Torquay where we ate lunch looking out over the Southern Ocean.
• Jan Juc Beach and Bells Beach to check out the views and to watch the surfers. Torquay and it’s beaches are part of the Surf Coast and obviously are known for their surf culture. Unfortunately, it was a cool day and their wasn’t much going on at the beach.
• Anglesea Golf Club to see their resident kangaroo population. They figure they have about 1000 kangaroos living at the golf course. We watched a few golfers tee off near the kangaroos. We were curious if they would move when the ball was hit but they just kept lying around not even noticing the balls flying over their heads. We’ve been told that sometimes the ball lands right next to them and they don’t move for the golfer to get the ball. It would be a quite interesting place to play golf.
• We checked out Split Point Lighthouse
• Short walk to Erskine Falls. The falls weren’t overly impressive mostly since it hadn’t rained much lately so there wasn’t much water going over them.
• We drove up a back road in Kennett River to see some wild koalas. There were lots of them up in the trees. We were suprised at how many were awake eating considering they sleep about 20-22 hours a day and eat for the other 2-4 hours. We even watched one climbing down the tree, then run to the next tree and climb back up, it was cool to watch plus we were only standing a few feet away from it.
• We stopped in Apollo Bay to spend the night. We picked up some kangaroo meat and cooked that up for supper. It’s a really really lean meat and it tasted alright. Eero really liked it but I wasn’t completely sure what I thought. It didn’t taste bad but I think I just felt wring eating kangaroo for some reason.

Day 2:

• Maits Rest, a short walk through sub-temperate rainforest, in the Great Otway National Park. We also drove down a side road through the park and saw some more koalas on our way to check out the Otway Lighthouse, which we didn’t actually see, since it cost $14 to get onto the grounds to be able to see it and go in it. We weren’t really interested because we have seen and been in a few lighthouses already on our long trip.
• The Twelve Apostles. They are 8 giant rock stacks that come out of the Southern Ocean. There used to be 9 you could see but one fell in 2005. Apparently there are a few more that are out of view from the viewing areas.
• Loch Ard Gorge where we went for a walk and saw where the Loch Ard ship from England was wrecked in 1878. There are lots of shipwrecks along the coast of the Great Ocean Road.
• The Arch which is, as it’s name implies, a giant rock arch coming out of the ocean.
• On our way back to Melbourne we stopped in Colac at the Otway Estate Winery and Brewery to sample some wine and beer.

On our first full day in Sydney we set off through the Royal Botanical Gardens towards the famous Sydney Opera House. We had a nice stroll through the gardens and got a great view across to the opera house and the Harbour Bridge. We decided not to take a tour of the inside of the opera house since it was expensive and we weren’t overly interested considering the price so we wandered around the foyer as well as the outside of it. We went to the gift shop and looked in the books for a bit of history and a photo tour of it.

Afterwards we wandered to Circular Quay towards The Rocks market where they had all sorts of neat arts and crafts as well as some gourmet foods. As we were looking for somewhere for lunch the skies let loose and it thundered and lightninged and poured rain for a good 30-45 minutes. So we ate our fish and chip lunch under an overhang before making a run for it. We quickly checked out the Modern Art Gallery before heading down to Paddy’s Market near Chinatown. We definitely had a market day. Paddy’s market was huge and had all sorts of different things…souvenirs, food, clothes, shoes, electronics, wigs, and an odd assortment of other things. After spending a few hours wandering around there we called it a day since our feet were hurting from all the walking.

The next day we hopped the metro to Circular Quay and went to the Police museum to see their exhibit on the history of pubs in Sydney. It wasn’t as exciting as Eero expected and the rest of the museum wasn’t overly thrilling either, although it did have a few interesting things, but it gave us something to do while it was raining. Afterwards we watched a busker juggle a chainsaw and then we walked across the Harbour Bridge. After walking across the bridge we caught the metro down to Darling Harbour/Cockle Bay and went to the Maritime Museum. They have a Lindt Chocolate Cafe at the Cockle Bay Wharf so we had the yummiest hot chocolate on our way back to the hostel.

Today we took the ferry to Manly Beach. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t cooperating and it was cool, windy, plus it rained off and on most of the day, so we didn’t get to relax on the beach. We did go for a nice walk along the waterfront trail and saw lots of surfers, some scuba divers and a pod of dolphins swimming in the surf. We also saw some giant spiders in the trees which Sarah really didn’t like. After Manly we caught the ferry back to Circular Quay and then hopped onto the ferry to Darling Harbour since Eero wanted to check out the fish market. Once we were on the ferry we realized the market closed at 4pm and it was 3:45pm. Instead we went to Luna Park to check it out. Luna Park is an amusement park that is really small with old fashioned rides. It was pretty dead since the weather wasn’t very nice and we didn’t stay long because each ride was $8. We then headed to the Lord Nelson Brewery pub so Eero could continue his sampling of foreign beers. Later on in the evening after supper we went for a walk to the Royal Botanical Gardens to see the view of the city at night. We saw some flying foxes eating fruit in the trees and we almost got peed on by a couple of them! Luckily they missed!

That’s all for Sydney, tomorrow we are off to do drive the Great Ocean Road and then Melbourne.

We have gotten some more photos of NZ finally posted as well.

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