Great Ocean Road….

Itinerary: Pick up Campervan 10:00am in Adelaide – get it to Melbourne by 3pm in 3 days time.. 1000KM

The Great Ocean Road is one of, if not the best thing to do in Australia and it was a must do for me so we decided to do it in style. We got a cracking relocation deal which meant we saved at $400 each and we were moving a 6 berth luxury campervan from Adelaide to Melbourbe with four of us.. This beast had everything.

Toilet
Shower
Gas stove
Kettle
Toaster
Microwave
3 double beds
Awning
Beasty engine!
Cruise control
Automatic

Off we set, first stop was to the local supermarket and I think at this moment we realised how big our van was it.. It was more like a Lorry. No car park space in the world would fit this in, so we just took up a few!!

Fully stocked and loaded we set off on the longest day in distance wise… We had about 1000km to do and the first day we did over 550km alone. Myself, George and Marcus shared the duties this day and found ourselves on lots of Freeways and straight roads that seemed to keep going and going.. They love a long straight road here it’s crazy, no bends for miles! It was an easy vehicle to drive and as soon as we got it up to 110km/h we put on the cruise control and sit back and relax.. Easy!!

Our first destination was to become more of an adventure! I had marked that the first place we were to stop over was the Grampians National Park.. Mountains, waterfalls, wildlife – everything Australia has to offer!!

As soon as we pulled off the freeway then we were going deep into the wilderness! Straight 25km into the national park, inbetween all the mountains and all I can say is that I’m not quite sure how I managed to get that beast along all the long windy roads hanging off the sides of mountains, furniture flying everywhere in the back due to the constant winding! I had kangaroos hop along the road infront of me and even 3 Emu’s made an appearance to run out in front of the van! Haha we arrived.. An empty camp site, we found our pitch, no power, a hole to go to the toilet in and a bucket as a shower.. No joke haha we out here!! But we had each other, lights on our phone and plenty of wood around us to make a fire!! That’s what it’s all about and we got ourselves off to a fantastic start on the road, away from any reality and in the middle of everything – spiders, snakes, kangaroos, the lot!

We slept, somehow. I won’t lie, I was scared. We were literally in the middle of nowhere and parked up at an empty campsite.. Something out of a horror movie!

We got up bright and early and make a trek 1km down road on foot to a place called Mackenzie Falls – kind of self explanatory but this place had a cracking waterfall at the bottom of the ridge. I was so excited that I actually went over my ankle about 10 steps down the descent and was left hobbling along on my already weak ankles but we made it.. Annoyingly for us ‘No swimming allowed’ greeted us at the bottom.

Off we went on our next part of our trip… The itinerary was get as close to the Great Ocean Road as possible so we could do it all in a day the last day.. We decided on staying at Port Campbell Holiday Park, the complete opposite to where we had stayed the night before!!

So we drove around 200km all the way through the Grampian National Park and the long winding roads and out onto the freeway again.. The weather was beautiful and we stopped off at other places such as Lake Bellfield and towns where the locals were very accommodating and friendly which is a recurring theme across Australia but even outside the standard tourist places!

We stocked up on the usual (Bread, Beans, Water and Egg – it’s a good job I love beans on toast!) and headed to our luxury campsite. We had power sockets, water connection but we also had a communal shower room and toilets with hot water and a communal kitchen with a TV to get our daily Big Bash fix! It was basically a Butlins, full of kids riding round on there bikes and families in caravans! We set out the awning and set up for the night of cards, goon and deep meaningful conversations about biggest regrets in life and where we want to be in so many years time etc haha!

After a cushty nights sleep we woke up late and were under pressure to get the van back in time to Melbourne..

Just 5 minutes down the road was our first stop and the most famous part of the whole journey… The 12 Apostles.. An absolutely amazing view and one to remember for many years to come.

We soon had a scare and by a scare I mean we were on the brink of running out of petrol in the middle of a windy road with no town within 35km. The petrol light was flashing for a looong time and it felt ridiculous long and I’ve never been so scared in my life! Somehow we stumbled across an old school petrol station in the smallest town and I’m convinced that if we didn’t have this then we would of definitely not made the next petrol stop.

The next scare came when out sat nav told us the expected arrival time was to be 4:15pm.. Not perfect when we had to have it back by 3pm! We soon got a wriggle on, winding through the roads it was a site to behold. We stopped at Apollo Bay and had a swim in the sea, up there with the nicest beaches I’ve been on so far! We then found ourselves in a battle against time and we drove through towns recently struck by the catastrophic bushfires. Driving through the middle of the black trees and ruined soil, a sight to behold with the sea on one side and such tragedy on the other!

We eventually got to the Apollo campervan by 4:25 and after they through in some extra charges we were on our way, the adventure was over but definitely one to remember and another thing ticked off my long bucket list!!

Now we made it to Melbourne it’s time to see what a new city is about! St Kilda is our suburb and looks unreal during the day…

George’s Birthday the next big event.. 23! To celebrate we went for brunch and headed into the city centre…. We then somehow found ourselves on centre court at the Australian Open watching Andy Murray!! Well that escalated quickly… Straight sets win and we caught a few other matches on the outside courts, an overall great spontaneous day out!

Continuing our sporting fix… Off we went to MCG to watch the Semi Final of the Big bash and support some world class players on display.. Most notably the one and only Kevin Pietersen who delivered by hitting a 50 in a successful run chase to send Melbourne Stars through to the final tomorrow!