Road trip...what a week!

For the good and complete version of the trip, see Keegan's blog...

Gotcha! Nah, I will write my own watered down, eyes-closed-half-the-time-because-i-was-asleep-in-the-car version.

Short:

1st day - Woke up early in the morning to drive to some coast, went along that coastline on Great Ocean Road to this place called Wye River while admiring the awesomely spectactular views of cliffs, road and waves. Pitched up camp, made dinner and slept to the soothing grunts and groans of koalas and I quote "sound like they are perpetually clearing their throat of rocks" - Keegs. Oh yeah, the car was jam packed with food, our clothes and toiletries et cetera, and camping gear, and once i get the photos and publis a longer version of the road trip, you will feel for me and Keegan having to be squished in the backseat, albeit among the comfort of well placed pillows. *Oh yeah, so much for camping, we actually had great food for the entire trip, which was VERY muchly appreciated ;)*

2nd day - We went to some place called Colac via Apollo Bay I think, and visited a waterfall on the way. When we got to Colac, we picked up Amanda who we, thanks to eating all the food so that we could make room in the car, managed to squish into the backseat along with Keegs and I, and then we went to this place called Stevenson's Falls, where we tried to initiate contact with the camping ground, only to find ourselves going in circles BACK to the place which we thought was the car park or something. We proceded to pitch camp, visit the rot-a-loo *that's right, a ROT-A-LOO!!!* for our biological wasteage needs, and picked leeches off someone's leg and the tent.

Seeing as this was a completely secluded and unpowered site, we reckoned it would be a good idea to get a fire started not just for the light and warmth, but also that we may cook our dinner. Giving a more than necessary tan to my rice cooker pot and Leanne's real pot, we managed to make a great meal of pasta in sauce and have fruit salad for dessert in the pitched darkness and smokey night, trying to determine the location of the southern cross in the sky with a big ol' tree in the way. We all ended up in one tent, laughing our heads off everytime this owl went "hoot hoot!".

3rd day - Wow, now this you have to read!!! There we were, mindfully worrying about our own business in the car as Mel was carefully driving us to our next destination when all of the sudden...

Leanne: As i opened my eyes to the coastline, the only words i could utter out was 'wow, it's so beautiful.' After a moment of silence, i continued, 'it looks strangely like the...'

Person A: "omg it is the 12 apostles..."

Person B: Angrily, "Keegan..."

HAHAHA! We were definitely NOT supposed to be going to the 12/8 apostles, and there we were! Hahaha, while it was an awesome and spontaneously sudden (yes, i'm breaking the rule of using two similar words as a combo, so what!?) change of direction and plans, it was, as I always say, "CHAOS THEORY RULES", as we were meant to turn LEFT to go the place we were originally intended, but cos of our lack of fuel and wanting to have-fun-quick, we ended up going the wrong way and found ourselves among tourists also visiting the apostles. Why not, I say. The view was magnificent, and then we walked down to this little beach with a cove, and had a great time working out our legs to push through the sand.

So, being quite geographically displaced from our originally intended location, we spent the night at this caravan/camping ground, which, luckily for us, had laundry facilities, tv and a nice open wide kitchen, where we spent the evening once again cooking up a great dinner and enjoying a warm cup of tea with biscuits for supper. Fortunately, there were little or not owls here to beautifully "promote" our sleep, hehe.

4th day - Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure we spent this entire day walking, first, down to this place that was named something like "moonblade crest" or something, but we ended up going halfway down this ravine FIRST by jumping over a barbed fence AFTER a long long hike down to it before we decided it wasn't worth the effort to get down there. I think I heard afterwards that we were actually meant to go to this other place for that moonblade thingy...whatever. Then we drove to this treetop cove thingy that would've been really nice to go through, but unforunately would've cost us a pretty penny, so we decided to try our luck by going down to Cape Otway, which had a really nice antique lighthouse. Yet again, the money drove us away into the loving arms of the camp that was to be our home for that night, Bimbi Park.

We spent most of the remains of that day on like a 3-3.5 hrs walk down to Station Beach and Rainbow Falls, which was definitely worth the trek, seeing as the girls picked up a lot of sus looking rocks, and keegan taking all these photos, and me drenching myself trying to get within the cave of the waterfall so that i could take pictures. The trek back was pretty hilarious, not because we saw the cutest little Echidna digging for ants on the way but because of someone *cough cough* struggling to get up a sand dune which seemed like it required a world's worth of effort. HAHAHA. Thankfully, we made it back to Bimbi Park in once piece to enjoy the taken-from-ikea kitchen and living room to enjoy a bit of dinner and a long game of texas hold-em poker with the guys ending in victory! Keegan's courage and my steadfastedness in actually "holding 'em" triumphed over the numerously successful but reckless attacks by Leanne, the silent-yet-deadly-and-distracted tactic look of Mel, and Amanda's....um....good playing skills?

5th day - OMG, this is SO another one that you must read.

So what I was wishing for for most of the trip was a day spent at a beach, getting baked to "well done/burnt". It is said that we should be careful of what we wish for, because look ye all and behold! We DID spend a whole day at the beach, an entire 14 hrs!!! The first 6-7 of which were spent graciously throwing ourselves at the oncoming waves, which ended up giving me a few scratches over my body due to the thrashing i received from being dragged along the sand and trying to find pippies! However, when we got back to our car, we were greatly confused as to why the @#$^#$& hell the car wouldn't start! After a few unsuccessful attempts at getting it working from us and a few kind strangers, we ended up calling the RACV to come and help us.

By the time they came, which was a few hours after, I had looked at the key and thought "That metal thingy there must have some sort of purpose, since the ignition thing also had a platform for that metal thingy on the key to contact", and whaddya know, it was the freakin' engine killer in case the key got screwed up! *sigh* Those were the words of the mechanic who came and tried out a few things to get the car started, so what was a little splash on the keys ended up being like a 4 hour campout in the car by me and Amanda while the others went to pick up Mel's dad in a taxi so that he could bring us a spare key to start the car, a 4 hour drive!!! THANK YOU MEL'S DAD! WE ARE GOING TO BUY YOU SHIRAZ!.

So yeah, listening to swing music and talking for hours on end, the calvary finally came, and after a whole day ordeal, we made it back to melbourne in one piece to sleep soundly and comfortably. Oh yeah, while we were waiting for them to come back, these people actually came up in taxis to camp on the beach that we were on, and Manda and I were like "omg, are those cultists? hide! and don't let them see us" Later on, we were thinking that that would've been one taxi fare, as the closest town that they could've come from would've been like apollo bay or something, a fair half hour or more drive away.

So yeah, that's the short version of the road trip, for the complete version, just read everyone else's so that you may compile it yourself. Hmph

Thanks for listening!