The Great Ocean Road is a stunning drive. The winding roads cling to the cliff sides, beaches sweep in and out of view, every corner seems to offer up a new photo opportunity. Our first stop was at Bell's Beach, Australia's most famous surf beach, though only a couple of blokes were out catching the rips. It is isn't a huge beach and we took a walk along its breadth before jumping back in our small hire car (a Ferrari cleverly disguised to resemble a Nissan, so as not to draw attention) to continue the journey.

Just off the main road past Apollo Bay is a dirt road where we went searching for small fluffy bears in trees, otherwise known as Ewoks, or more regularly known as Koalas. Anyway, we found 20 or so and a few even moved their heads for us, which is extra special as they rarely move, so we were told by some helpful old Englishman with a giant camera. In fact the word Koala means no water (apparently), on account that they never leave their tree, well they actually do but rarely, all very confusing. But they are cute things. Further along we swung by the Otway Fly to climb in the treetops, which for me was bloody scary. It involves being 100 feet up in the rainforest canopy, which sways the metal walkway with a grated floor like a boat in a force 28 (slight exaggeration). I had to give Julie the camera as I was not entirely confident of my footing and hastily headed down after reaching the highest part, while Julie sniggered and photographed my white ashen face.

We moved on to Gibson Steps, right next to the world famous 12 Apostles, where Julie and I headed down into the beach and drew our names in huge letters, which made for a top picture from the cliff tops (you had to be there). Next was the biggie, the 12 Apostles themselves, well 9 (we think), the others have now fell in the water, again very confusing. But they are a pretty amazing sight and even though I have seen them before you can just gaze at them and the coastline for ages, they seem to change colour as the day progresses, quite mystical really. After the 12 Apostles we stopped at a couple of other sights, The Grotto, London Bridge, Loch Ard Gorge, The Arch but after a while you can get a bit coast rock formationed out, so we decided to call it a day. 

We picked up a young French hitchhiker on our way to the backpackers who had lucked out on finding accommodation in one town and was walking to the next one, he had been walking most of the day. I told him he should have got the bus or hired a car but he was saving the cash, the irony wasn't lost when he told us that his name was Renault. We dropped him in Port Campbell, where we over nighted at a friendly, clean hostel (Port Campbell backpackers), refueling our bellies for our next stage, heading up to The Grampians. We were unsure if we could go due to the recent fire alerts but the guys in the Port Campbell visitor centre gave us the all clear and off we went. NOTE: Mum, this is several hundreds of kilometers from where the big bush fires are, though the smoke is still visible.

It was a shorter day on the road and we arrived at our hostel in Hall's Gap to dump our gear before lunchtime. The town was having a huge Jazz festival, so as we drove through on our way to get some lunch we saw a few people setting up some gear in car parks, striking up a few times before the organised stuff started in the evening. We listened to one group of old boys, they were great, sounded very 50s, though how I would know is anyone's guess... We spent the afternoon doing a few short walks to Mackenzie Falls, the Balconies and to the Pinnacle, probably the most famous sites in the Grampians National Park. It is a small mountain range, very dry and very wild, lovely walking, views and yet more strange rock formations. I reckon this is what Australia should be most famous for, there has to be more strange rock formations in this country than any other by some distance. "Australia, home of the world's most bizarre rock formations", or "Australia, we rock".

Arriving into Adelaide I called my mate Ben, another cricket buddie who played in our team in Lincolnshire for a season about 6 years ago. He and his lovely girlfriend Wendy were putting us up for a few nights. I stayed with him back in 2003 and we hung out a fair bit when he lived in London a couple of year's back, was great to see him complete with his blond Elvis sideburns. Upon pick up Ben took us via a pub to sample a gallon or tow of the the legendary Cooper's Pale before getting to his place a couple of hours later. In fact I bought him a slab of Cooper's on our way into the city because I know he loves it, they didn't last long at his place. Then it got a bit messy. We drank more beer and wine sat outside his backyard, followed by a BBQ and some very intense table tennis games at a friend's house, then onto a pub that had a band (I think, it was gone midnight by this time), followed by a dirty kebab, followed by more beers back in Ben's backyard. Falling into bed somewhere after 5 or 6am, who knows.

After a morning in bed we arose at 11am to a fry up and strong coffee before piling into Wendy's car to head down the coast to do some wine tasting in McClaren Vale, a beautiful vineyard area. Blurry eyed we stumbled into our first tasting and compared to our experience in South America these guys that run the wineries are very liberal with the juice, "try this, try that, here let me give you some more". The sun was blasting, the vines were shining and the wine was good, fine company to boot, awesome times. We headed to the next winery where the guy practically left us the bottle. We got into some old stories and all was good in the world. Our next stop was Victory Hotel, a pub that overlooks the coastline for some (more) wine, beer and food. We left at gone 10pm, good times.

The next day we had already arranged an organised wine tour to the famous Barossa valley with Groovy Grape Tours. It was a great fun day, more wine was drunk, though we found the wineries we visited the day before were of a better quality in general but still it was good. And on the third night we rested.

Next day we toured the city and did some shopping, before I met up with Ben for a game of golf where he preceded to whoop me by some distance. I became very familiar with the shrubs, trees and fauna of the course, very nice it was too...well until I hacked it to pieces. 

On to Perth via a 10 day tour of the South West.