Wednesday 25th (vid)

More pics

      

Monday 26th February 2006

After three nights at Mount Gambier, we travelled further across the coast to a town called Portland and stayed for one night.  As we were lacking a few items for our camper-van, we headed into the town to the charity shops.  Jacqui, you would have been so proud of our bargain shopping!  For $7.00 (a couple of quid) we got two mugs, two wine glasses, two tumblers, Tupperware, a reading book, a toaster, and a warm woolen blanket (new) for when the evenings get colder.  Not much else to report on Portland though it is a nice sleepy little fishing town.    Most evenings we’ll walk to the seafront & jetty to see the locals fishing to walk off our dinner more than anything!  As Portland is becoming quite a well known fishing town, big game fishing in particular, we purchased some fish from the local fish mongers and cooked it nice and simple that evening for dinner and enjoyed it with our Wolf Blass wine.  Trouble is, we can’t remember what fish it was, but it was delicious.

Next day we set off along the start of the Great Ocean Road and stopped off for lunch in a pretty town called Port Fairy and then continued on to Warrnambool where we spent the night.  As it was a Saturday night, we got trashed in one of the towns pubs. 

Next day, nursing our hangovers and stopping the van for Lee to throw up on the side of the road, nice!, we headed toward Port Campbell.  It was only an ickle town and we sleep most of the day so can’t tell you much about that!

I, Liz, have been suffering from home sickness quite bad for a few days which gave me an tremendous pull home.  I’d heard from other people that home sickness can be really hard, but I wasn’t expecting to feel that low.  I feel better now and am back on track for enjoying our time however there was a moment where I wanted to head home on the next plane…

We’ve had a fantastic day today travelling further up the Great Ocean Road.  It was quite overcast this morning, jeans and jumper weather - eek!  But by late morning the sun shone through and gave us a great viewing of the magnificent limestone coast.  The Twelve Apostles were looking pretty stunning along with three or four other viewing points we did along the way.  We have many, many pictures, but we won’t bore you with those just yet as we have very slow internet here.

We stumbled accross as sign post pointing to Melba Gully so we truddled down the road to find Victoria’s only rainforest.  A first experience for both of us.  We did a 1.9km walk through the steep inclines of the gully. 

We’ve then drove to our next stop over point being a place in the Great Otway National Park which is renowned for it’s koala population.  In fact, we had only just set up our pitch for the night and a koala ran across the path and straight up a small and flimsy eucalyptus tree. 

For your info, we’re continuing along the Great Ocean Road again tomorrow for a town called Lorne. 

Laters potatas x

Saturday 24th February (pics)

    

  

  

 

Thursday 22nd February

Sorry guys no pictures for now ‘computers says no’.  We were excited about putting some new pictures on but we’ll have to keep you in suspense for now!

It’s been a week since we’ve last added a post to the blog.    In that time we got our van back all fixed and have moved on further round the coast.  Unfortunately it has set us back a bit financially but we should be OK.  We are really grateful to the guys at the garage for looking after us so well.

A few nights ago we stopped off for the night in a town called Robe see link: http://www.robe.sa.gov.au/  We took a walk down to the harbour for so good old fish and chips by the sea.  Unfortunately the Australian’s have a thing or two to learn about the classic dish i.e. a lot less grease would help!  The fish was extremely fresh though as it had come straight off the boat.

We’ve moved on further along the Limestone Coast to the second largest city in Southern Australia called Mount Gambia see link: http://www.mountgambiertourism.com.au/.  We’ve been acclimatising here as it’s considerably colder and we haven’t even ventured into the swimming pool.  Mount Gambia is built on the slopes of an extinct volcano and has  lakes, caves, sinkholes and craters.  We paid for a guided tour of some of the caves this morning for a bit of history lesson and saw where the cave divers entered under the water.  It’s a grade four diving cave which means it’s the most dangerous diving and difficult kind it also takes seven years experience and a lot of money to get to this standard.  I think we’ll be passing on this one but it was good to see what can be achieved with a bit of guts and determination.

The Blue Lake supplies the city’s water supply and is quite a site to see and believe us when we say it’s really blue!  Aparantely the reason for it’s vivid colour is unknown spooky.

Last night we visited the Umpherston Sinkhole which was created when the roof of the underground water system collapsed leaving a very big hole in the ground.  It’s been turned into a tropical garden which is lit up at night and all the resident possums came out for a feed. 

We’ve spent three nights altogether at Mount Gambier and will be moving on again tomorrow to somewhere but Lee can’t remember right now.  We’ll actually be joining the Great Ocean Road within the next few days for a gentle drive as we plan to stop frequently along it’s path. 

Thanks for your messages guys, always a pleasure to read.

Love L & L xx

Friday 16th February

Lee -

So we have a diagnosis from the garage.  Turns out from my original thoughts of it being something simple like a spark plug or a lead playing up, they delved deeper as the engine sounded like it was only firing on three cylinders.  By this time, it was getting late in the day, the garage was due to shut and the van was only usable for short mileage.   As mentioned before, we had a kind offer from one of the mechanics to park the van on his front garden for the night as he only lived round the corner.   Phil was ever so generous and like he said ‘us Poms stick together’.  Thanks again Phil. 

The next day, the garage found the fault.  There was a hole in one of our exhaust valves.  This part of the engine had to be sent off somewhere else to be pressure tested and valve replaced.   The garage also acknowledged our predicament and have made sure we’ve had a vehicle loaned to us so we’ve been buzzing around in a ropey old ute, sadly with no dog in the back!  We are currently staying in the next village along in a static caravan on a nice site.

The garage are doing there very best to get us the van back for the weekend however this is a hard job as half of our engine has been removed.  As they are closed on Saturdays and Sundays, we more than likely won’t get the van back until Monday.  If it isn’t possible to get the van back today, they plan to swap the ute for a Toyota Corola which should be more fuel friendly and allow us to drive to the beach perhaps and enjoy the 40 degree heat expected this weekend.  Phew!

Lizzy dealt with the bad news well to start with as my facial expressions were not that of concern but when it became obvious that this is gonna cost a lot money and we would have to spend four nights in a caravan when we have a campervan of our own, we had a small amount of tears & ’why us?’. Unfortunately SHIT HAPPENS to all of us so we are getting on with things and have made arrangements for my work tools to be sent to my great uncle Terry’s in Brisbane.  This way, we can redeem some funds a bit sooner than planned, if need be.

Thoughts did go through our minds as to whether the sellers knew of this problem, but we’ve been assured that this fault is impossible to temporary fix for the purpose of a sale for instance.  The hole that appeared was in the middle of the engine and the mechanics have assured us that the Nissan Urvan Camper-van has a pretty sound engine and it was just bad luck that it happened to us only two days after buying it.  Since we’ve been looking a camper-vans, we’ve seen some really bad examples.  Despite our problem with the engine, we are still pleased with our purchase as we know we have a good example.  

Right, we’re gonna go and get hot and sweaty now.  The last couple of days has been 37-40 degrees.  Sweet!

Wednesday 14th February

We’ve had the van for a few days now and have left the city centre.  We drove up to the Adelaide Hills and stopped for a few nights in the town of Belair and pitched up in a campsite in the Belair National Park.  We spent yesterday evening with a couple from the Netherlands who are following the same route as us round Australia so it was good to share pictures and stories with each other.

Today we took a walk in the park and were really excited to see sleepy koala’s hugging the trees.

So now the bad news, we’ve had a few problems with the van but we won’t know the diagnosis until tomorrow morning.  We’re camped up on the mechanics front garden which we are extremely grateful for – thanks Phil!! 

We’ll let you know how we get on…

Sunday 11th February

Liz -

Whilst walking to the Botanical Gardens here in Adelaide yesterday, we stumbled accross a street market and a stool offering free mountain bike hire for two hours.  It’s an incentive offered by the Adelaide City Council to encourage people to use alternative transport and improve good health, result we thought!  We got round the park in super quick time so took a ride down by the river where we had walked the day before.  On the way back to the hostel, we found a nice cheap shop and so bought some items we’re going to need for our van. 

Today we went on an arranged trip to the Barrossa Valley which is Australia’s most famous wine region.  We visited four vineyards altogether and tried some really lovely wines and ports and purchased two bottles of wine to enjoy in our camper-van when we get it.   Andy & Linda – we wished you could have been there!  The package also included a three course lunch at a local restaurant which was very nice and helped soak up the wine. 

Nothing else to report, hope you’ve seen the new pictures…

Pictures

       

Friday 9th

Lee -

Hey all just a quick post not been up to much today just a good walk along the river then a mooch around the city’s shops etc.

I got stopped by a journalist in the street today and was asked a question about beggars in the city, they only got my opinion and photographed me to print it! I’m gonna be in the Adelaide Sunday mail.

anyways roll on monday we want our bus.