When heading towards Melbourne from Adelaide, we had a quick look at the Blue Lake in Mount Gambier (which is indeed quite blue) and stopped at Robe & Point Fairy. Quite cosy but nothing too special, but then we started our journey on the Great Ocean Road! A bit unlucky with the weather as it was pretty cloudy and rainy sometimes too. Still, it was quite cool! I loved to see the power of the ocean slamming onto those giant rocks.
The Lock Ard Gorge was my favorite, that’s that typical photo you’ll see when you google Great Ocean Road, next to the 12 apostles 🙂 10000 Chinese people were of the same opinion obviously (I mean, how many selfies can you possibly take?) 🙂 Don’t underestimate your timing for this road though, I thought 180 km’s in a full day? Easy! But naturally, because you’re in & out the car like 10 times, taking a little stroll, shooting some photos, time goes really fast. It was already 18.30 when we finally pulled into Apollo Bay, our rest stop for that night. The BIG4 campground gave us an ocean view spot, awesome! (It was raining, so we didn’t actually sat outside to enjoy the view but anyway!)
Check out all the Great Ocean Road photos!
The next morning we took off on our final laps towards Melbourne, the Great Ocean Road continued for some time and it was still very pretty. I loved the small surf villages that were built alongside the coast like Lorne, made me think a bit of Saint Maxime in the South of France! Around noon we arrived in Melbourne and Arno pulled right into the city centre, yes with our van :). The reason for this being pretty simple, two days before that I was complaining about my camera being very old and having some problems with its focus so my photos were pretty much a disappointment to me. We started searching the camera stores a bit and Arno came up with a solution, he would get a new one and I would get his camera. Now I’m starting to think this is how it always happens in every marriage or household? Wifey sacrifices herself for the leftover while hubby gets a brand new thing.. I saw it happen with my mommy all the time so I’m afraid I’m getting in that same spiral.. Anyway Arno’s camera does have awesome features for photos so I can’t really complain and to be honest I know so little about it all that he could convince me rather easily (you should hear his promotional speech, it’s hard to resist.). So for 2 days Arno couldn’t wait to get to the closest camera house where they had a deal going on for a camera with 3 lenses.
And so it happened, our first speed visit to Melbourne was us rushing through the streets because our parking was crazy expensive. It payed off (maybe in this case that’s not the best saying..), I mean he’s thrilled with his new camera of course 🙂
The next day we explored a bit more, well I shopped primarily because I desperately needed new shoes as my Nike’s were completely torn on my heals which resulted in huge blisters. We decided to split up, when Arno goes along I always feel guilty for letting him wait so I went on my own while he could try out his newest camera in the city. Literally 10 minutes after I left him I found new shoes, something in which I didn’t succeed for the weeks before that (I started my search in Adelaide) so I was pretty thrilled and looooove them!
I spent some more strolling in the shopping centre I was in, honestly because it was huge and I couldn’t directly find an exit. Had some lunch and called Arno to meet somewhere again. We went for coffee at the Riverside I believe, awesome spot. We decided to call it a day and walk back to our van, but on our way there we saw a pretty cool Burger place so burgers it was! It seems like ordering & picking up your food at a counter yourself in a restaurant is pretty common here, good trick to keep people from leaving without paying of course. The burgers were good, a dessert would have made me explode so we headed back to our campground.
We also discovered St. Kilda already, a hip beach town a bit further from the city. A really cool place actually! We spent our afternoon there, working a bit on our laptops in a nice bar. I spent our time mostly searching for houseshares & jobs. Which can be pretty tiring.. Let’s just hope it pays off!