Great Ocean Road and Adelaide

Great Ocean Road

Day 11

After a boozy day, I woke up feeling really knackered but we had to get going early to pick up the next hire car and set off for the Great Ocean Road.

It was a really windy day, with lots of stops to take in all the famous sights. There were some stunning rock formations and dramatic views but overall it wasn’t quite as amazing as I was expecting it to be. Maybe it was because I was so tired and the wind didn’t help! I think James got the most enjoyment from behaving like a boy racer in our Holden Cruze.

However, it did have one amazing feature – WILD KOALAS. I love those furry little things and there was a patch where we saw about 15, including one little fella who was very low down and friendly.

Totally know where I am going...

It was pretty windy...

Day 12

This day was dedicated to driving to Adelaide. For once I managed to stay awake all day as I was DJing on the iPod. Mainly there was a lot of James singing Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’ very loudly.

After some successful map reading we hit Adelaide and had to move onto the iPhone to find our destination and all our city navigation problems from Brisbane transferred over to Adelaide. After an hour and a half of taking wrong turns (that blue dot on the map can be very confusing) we finally found West Lakes, where we stayed with four lovely girls, Arlene, Jen, Jenny and Katie. After nearly two weeks of moving around it was really nice to have some home comforts, do laundry and chill out.  

Day 13

We ventured into the city and could not believe how dry the heat was – I feel like we’ve acclimatised to the humid heat now but Adelaide at 37 degrees was a new experience.

The heat also creates a major fly issue. It is so dry that hundred of flies flock around you and try to invade your mouth, eyes, ears and nose. Apparently they are trying to get some moisture. It’s so gross. If you watch people walking down the street you can literally see them swatting away flies. Hundreds may be an exaggeration but that’s what it felt like.  

We really liked the east side of the city centre and also stopped by the botanical gardens and art gallery. In the evening we went to the beach at Henley and were planning on having fish and chips on the beach and watch the sunset. However the flies were, yet again, such persistent buggers that we ended up sat in the car, with the A/C on, eating our dinner and watching the sunset. Romantic!

While we’ve been here we’ve been streaming some TV shows from the UK, we told the girls about this and they were pretty excited at the idea of watching Take Me Out from Australia, so we cracked open the sparking Shiraz (actually very yummy) and had a chilled night in.

Day 14

After tasting the delights of Tamar Valley in Tassie and Yarra Valley in Victoria it was only fair that we went to Barossa while we were in Adelaide. The girls were seasoned experts on the area so we went to the big famous wineries Jacobs Creek and Wolf Blass, but we also did a tasting at Murrey Street which was a smaller boutique winery. It was a really fun day and we finished it off with a BBQ.

James and the blonds

Next stop… Kangaroo Island