Welcome back!!
i have been in australia for almost 6 weeks now so thought it was about time i told you all what i've been doing! the last time i wrote, i was in freezing cold adelaide...as i said, not much to do there! the main problem was we flew into oz on anzac day, one of australias biggest public holidays. typical! so everthing was closed for the whole weekend. that meant we couldnt do anything in adelaide, even if there was something to do! the only things that stick in my mind were going to the museum of south oz and going to a wine museum. not much! we decided to get out of there and took a local bus to one of the wine regions-the barrossa valley. it was such a nice quiet place and we stayed in a very cheap caravan park which was a million times better than the hostel we stayed in, in adelaide! since we didnt take a day trip to the valley to visit the wineries, we had to just walk around to find some. this turned out to be much better as colin and i were given our very own tour in one place and the woman spent about an hour with us trying all the different wines (see pics!) sadly we didnt get to go to the jacobs creek winery, but we did drive past it!
after the wineries, we had another night in adelaide (zzz) then left for a 3 day, 2 night tour to kangaroo island with a very cool tour group called "groovy grape". this was my favourite thing in oz so far, so much wildlife and we got to rough it a little bit too which i much prefer! on the first night there was only about 7 of us including our mad tour guide called dan. we slept outside in "swags" which are basically like sleeping bags with a matress attached to the bottom. i was a little worried about snakes and spiders since it was cold and i thought they would crawl in-at least in africa we had tents! luckily nothing did, well not that i noticed anyway. on our second day we were joined by another 6 people or so and were driven around the island in a minibus looking at loads of things. the highlights were seal bay which is a breeding ground for hundreds of seals and sea lions and sand boarding! we did this in vietnam but it was no where near as crazy as this! our guide was very into it so we must have spent about 2 hours there and walked for miles to get to bigger and better dunes. i will put pics up but they are on colins camera at the minute! on the second night we slept in a cottage in the middle of nowhere with millions of kangaroos and wallabies bouncing about. we were forced to play a very horrible game of blind karaoke that night which involved a blind fold and an ipod with a song of your choice-it's very difficult to sing when you cant hear yourself but its hilarious for others to watch! on day 2 i was woken to see my first wild koala in a tree outside! we then raced around and saw a lot of the other sights (and koalas) including the remarkable rocks (where i went a bit crazy with photos) and another bay full of nz zealand fur seals and really huge waves. we took a walk through the "snake lagoon" i think it was called but thankfully didnt see any snakes!
straight after we finished the k.island tour, we had another night in adeladie (just couldnt get enough) then left the next morning for a 3 day/2 night tour of the gt ocean rd, also with groovy grape. this was also a great tour, a much bigger group lead by our guide-"clancy from australia"! before we got to the gt ocean rd we went through the grampians national park which got its name from the grampains in scotland because guess what-they are very like them! we went for a few walks around there and spent the night in a fancy hostel just outside the park. well it felt fancy to those who had just been on the k.island trip anyway! the next day we drove into victoria and down to the LIIIIMESTONE COAST where the gt ocean rd is. the scenery there was amazing and athough we were on a tour, we still managed to stop at most of the viewpoints and take pics. the twelve apostles was obviously the best stop but there was also the london bridge as it is known, the the grotto and the gorge. we first saw the apostles at sunset and were very very lucky to see a huge group of little penguins walking up to the beach for the night. clancy said he hadnt seen them for months so that was great, especially since we didnt manage to see any on k.island. en route to melbourne we also stopped at bells beach-the home of rip curl. even though it was a bit of a horrible day there were still hundred of surfers out and loads of dogs walking around as their owners were surfing!
our ocean rd trip ended in melbourne but luckily most of the people who were on our trip stayed in melbourne for a few days so we got to see quite a bit of them. colin and i spent 1 week there which i think was a good amount of time and i got to see a lot of things i didnt get to see the last time i was here. infact the only thing i remember melbourne for the last time is the neighbours tour! this time we took full advantage of the free bus and tram service and saw the major things such as the melbourne museum, the docks, the riverfront and did a tour of the famous melbourne cricket ground. i have never watched a game of cricket but still, at least i can say i've been! we had intended to spend a weekend in st kilda but once we got there we thought it was a bit rubbish! 1 weekend became 1 night as we had done everything by then. i had to fight back the temptation to go to another neighbours night while we were there.....
then from melbourne, we got a flight sydney which brings me to where we are now. we havn't really done any tourist things yet as this is where we are suposed to settle for a while and make money to fund the next part of the trip!
