Melbourne & Our Road Trip!

Life on the Road 

We flew into Melbourne at around 1am December 3rd and blearily found our way towards our hostel, and more importantly, our beds. After three long months of living the employed Perth dream and saving up all that we could, it was finally time to don the faithful Havaianas and reclaim our rightful role as frugal, noodle eating backpackers. The lifestyle came back to us pretty quickly, and within just a few hours the next day we were back in the shorts and vests and roaming around make-up free without a job related care in the world. 

We spent the next few days in central Melbourne, making full use of the free trams and taking advantage of the huge H&M that we had discovered - the first one we’ve come across in nine months - long story short, money was spent. 
It was then the day we had been waiting for - day one of our mini road trip! We left early to pick up our luminous green and purple Jucy camper-van, and after a quick stop off for the essentials - petrol, food and cider etc, it was time to hit the road. After a few hours we made it onto The Great Ocean Road, and after stopping for a necessary ‘we made it!’ photo, we headed onto our first stop for the night. What I may have failed to mention, is that it had already started pouring at this point, and so suddenly the idea of having to live, sleep and cook in this one vehicle wasn’t so appealing anymore…

Made it! 

We stayed on The Great Ocean Road for the next couple of days, visiting landmarks such as The Twelve Apostles, London Bridge, The Arch and Grotto, battling our way through hundreds of Asians and their selfie sticks in the process. 

Our route:

6th - Melbourne - Lorne
7th - Lorne - Princetown
8th - Princetown - Warnambool
9th - Warnambool - Port Camball
10th - Port Camball - Adelaide 
11th - Adelaide - Port Germein
12th - Port Germein - Port Lincoln

We arrived in our desired location of Port Lincoln on the 13th, and stayed for two nights as Abbie did her shark dive and we all went snorkelling with sealions, which despite the flipping freezing water, was an incredible experience. 
… 

13th/14th - Port Lincoln - Port Germein
15th - Port Germein - RV place
16th - RV place - Halls Gap
17th - Halls Gap - Princetown
18th - Princetown - Lara 
19th - Back to Melbourne 

I won’t bore you with all the details, but to summarise - Jucy let us down big time with the van and it’s many faults (no air-con, broken table, broken charging socket, temperamental speedometer etc) and unfortunately those things did put a downer on the trip at some points. 
However, overall we genuinely had such a fun time, and even though we were left to entertain ourselves 80% of the time, I can hand on heart say we came away with many good memories.

London Bridge

The Neighbours Tour!

It was the day I had been waiting for, and for those of you that know me personally, you’ll have no problem believing me when I say that it was one of the main reasons why I choose to travel Australia (joking…kind of). 
So we got on our minibus, complete with tour guide who was filled to the brim with Neighbours trivia, and also the phrases “You know it’s all lies right? It’s not real. They just pretend!” as if we thought it was some kind of documentary we’d been watching all these years… 
We visited Ramsay Street, sadly not actually named that, and had our photos taken dotted around each of the houses. Was super surprised at how small the colder-sack actually was in person, but still got overly excited to stand underneath Karl and Susan’s archway, so you know, swings and roundabouts. 
We then made our way to the studios and got shown around all of the outside sets - Dial-A-Kyle, Harolds, The Waterhole etc, and again were surprised at how small and close together everything actually is to each other. After that, we went back… Unfortunately it hadn’t been as good as I had hoped for, and we hadn’t met any of the cast as our travel agent in PeterPans Perth conveniently forgot to tell us they don’t work weekends when booking us on for a Saturday…But it was still fun, and we got a signed mugshot of Karl Kennedy, so it wasn’t a complete fail! 

Outside Karl & Susan's! 

We spent the last few days of our Melbourne adventure in St Kilda, which was definitely the highlight and our favourite place compared to the city. It had a real Venice Beach vibe, with people rollerblading, music festivals and an open cinema just a few minutes walk away. Our room at Base was also awesome, and gave us the chance to meet even more awesome people who we went out with and spent the next few days together on ‘operation tan’. 

Next stop - Sydney for Christmas and New Years!