We collected our bag and stepped outside into Australian air. That was it, we had completed our first entry. We could officially turn around and get back on a flight back to Bogota but why miss out on a mini adventure?! We had taken the cheapest flight to Aus and the cheapest out of the month and this gave us 9 days to explore!
We hopped a taxi to the camper rental shop and picked up our new home on wheels…shhhhh, don’t tell Peggy!
We threw our bag in the back and set off straight for the supermarket…on the ‘right’ side of the road we arrived at (as the angels sang and light came down from the heavens…) Aldi! We bought lamb steaks (first time we had seen lamb in 10 months), veggies and salad and of course a box of wine!

We skipped back to our van and unpacked and made it as much a home as we could. The van was tiny compared to Peggy and badly laid out. Tables rattled as we drove and there was nowhere to put anything! We missed Peggy already!
Desperate to get out of the city we found a small campsite on the outskirts and made the most of the gas BBQ and the lamb steaks and then went to make a plan online…hahaha who were we trying to kid. In Australia it is really expensive to use the internet and you are charged by the bandwidth. The campsite wanted $10 an hour so we just picked up a free map instead! We went for a dip in the pool even though it was really too cold to do so and then made up our van bed and snuggled up for the night. It turned out that the sleeping bags they had provided us with were a little uneven, one was a reasonable one and the other was like a silk handkerchief so we used them like blankets and cuddled against the cold.

Our first full day in Melbournewas spent trying to find our way out of the city, trying to decide where to go, trying to meet up with a friend and trying to make me better. I was full of cold to the point of feeling like death warmed up. We had been getting sore throats on and off for a few weeks and decided that while we were in a country that shared our language we would visit a doctor! That was an expensive morning. Residents in Australia pay an insurance called medicare. They pay for their treatment and then claim it back. Also as we were non residents we were not registered to a doctor. We popped into a pharmacy and tried to have him suggest a medication but he referred us to a doctor as whilst in Colombia we had been given the strongest antibiotic there is (over the counter) and that still hadn’t cleared the problem. We arrived at the doctors who charged $50 EACH to give us a check up and then prescribed us with 2 courses of antibiotics each which cost another £36 each this was going to be the first of our holiday illness claims! From there we went for a drive into Melbourne which was like a HUGE Didsbury in the area we were in, full of independant businesses and boutique stores, for a city it was lovely!

Our next stop was to meet our friend on the ground. We had been ‘Lucky’ enough to have been put into contact with Lucky. An amazing photographer in Melbourne by the amazing Jonas Seaman who was happy to be involved in our adventure. We found a reasonably priced internet cafe and arranged to meet him near his home. We chatted and asked his opinions of Australia as a place to live and talked weddings! We explained that we would like to try to arrange an aboriginal wedding if possible and checked dates and swapped a few contacts. We asked his advice on where to spend our little adventure time in Melbourne and he recommended the Great Ocean Road so we said our farewells and set off on the beautiful roads out ouf the city and onto the famous Ocean road.

It was strange to be on good solid roads with signs, traffic lights and no wild animals roaming around but we soon got into the swing of it! Its amazing how quickly you can slip back into the comfort of an easy ‘western’ world. Before we knew it we had accidently gotten ourselves onto a toll road, which wouldn’t be a problem if you could pay at the booth like everywhere else. This was an electronic toll which we had not been told about by the rental company and it was too late, we were on it and would have to worry about either being fined or paying it if we could get online somewhere. We weren’t going to let it ruin our day and within half an hour we were racing along country roads with the wind in our hair. The sky was blue and the air was fresh and crisp and although feeling ill it was a great feeling to be there.

Before long we found our fist camp in Angelsea. The site backed directly onto a long flat beach, we made ourselves a cup-a-soup (such luxury) and wrapped up warm and wandered along the sand and watched the birds pull juicy morsels from the golden grains. We wore ourselves out on fresh air and tucked into lamb steaks for the second night in a row, took our antibiotics and built the bed, snuggled down and almost froze to death.
Day two brought a determination to leave the bed made up like we do in Peggy but the van was all bed! we tried it anyway and hit the road again to enjoy more of the outdoors. We were dealing with the time change quite well by going to bed around 9pm and getting up with the early bird which meant we were seeing the best part of the day, the fresh mornings and the wildlife were astounding. We saw wallabies and kangaroos as we drove and when we arrived at our next campsite (with amazing free wifi) we walked 2 minutes from our campsite and saw a baby koala sat happily in a tree watching the world go by. His mum wasn’t far away and as we watched we saw flocks of parrots coming to see what we had! Just like pigeons they strutted upto us and when they realised we were empty handed went happily on with their business. We walked back to the van, not feeling well enough to wander too far and as we sat with the back door open eating our lunch one or two parrots even came into the van! There were huge dazzling white cockatoos, green macaws and red, blue and even pink and grey parrots everywhere! I couldn’t tell you the names of them all but they were lovely to see, so much nicer than toeless pigeons or mean crows, though when you have your washing hung out they cause the same result and then they are not so lovable!

We made the most of the free internet and blogged until we had square eyes and then crashed early in the now very messy bed (which we had to remake I might add) both through jetlag, being full of cold and having just worn ourselves out.
We woke up bright and early, gave up on leaving the bed out and packed it up. We strolled on the beach for a few minutes and excitedly set off to go and see more of the stunning Ocean road.
We saw emus running in the fields, the twelve apostles and the London Bridge – which are huge rock formations along the coast – and we even stopped at a whale sanctuary. We didn’t get to see any whales sadly as it was the wrong time of the year but it was a beatiful place and I could imagine how peaceful it would be sitting there for hours watching the whales play in the distance. Everything we did was free and the footpaths and facitilties at all of the stops were fantastic. Perfectly clean, well maintained, no risk to your life and no detriment to the surroundings either. We stopped in a little village (which was a bit ‘stepford wives’) and had fish and chips to share (it was not British fish and chips, BUT it WAS fish and chips!) on a bench outside in the crisp sunshine. We bought some supplies to make chicken soup to make me better and went to look for somewhere to stay. We stumbled upon a tourist information in Dunkeld and the kind lady said we could stay there in the carpark. There were showers and toilets in the car park and they would not be out of place in a 5 star hotel! We showered and (made the bed and then) fell into bed tired out again.

Our plan for the next day, as I was feeling a little brighter after my chicken soup, was to do some walking in the Grampians. We drove through the beautiful scenery, watching the kangaroos, emus and LOTS of sheep and did a few short walks. One of them was through a flood damaged area and it made you realise the power of nature. The bridge had been torn away and washed down stream, rocks and trees littered the walkway and the once raging river trickled along the path of destruction it had caused. It made us consider how lucky we are in the UK as we never suffer extremes of weather, just mostly the grey stuff!
We gave up on the hiking as the day went on and as we could enjoy so much from the relative comfort of the van (I struggled to get in the damn thing!) and we headed towards the wine growing region.
We stopped at 2 wineries and did some tasting. The grape of the area is Shiraz and we tried our frist ever sparkling shiraz. It wasn’t what we expected and weren’t sure how we felt about it but it was a nice experience to try something together for the first time. We got chatting to the lady holding the tasting and she asked where we were coming from and going to and we told her we had the camper. She immediatley offered us a place to stay for the night which was so kind of her! She lived in a beautiful area surrounded by fields of sheep, alpacas and grape vines! we parked alongside the vines and bunkered down for the night. We watched the stars which are out of this world! There was no light for miles around so they shone like torches. We even saw two shooting stars! We slept like logs and popped in on Nicole in the morning to thank her for her hospitality. It didnt end there as she made Alex a coffee and offered me a taste of her homebrew shiraz…I obviously made an impression at the wine tasting…I’ll let you decide whether that is a good thing or not! She packed us up with homebrew wine, beer, homegrown corguettes and apples and waved us off to continue our winey adventure.

We stopped at our first winery at 11am and the second at noon. We tried some lovely wines and ports and bought a bottle of ‘gone wrong’ reisling which was great, unusual and a real bargain. With all that wine tasting (dont worry folks, Alex took it easy as he was driving…my wine tasting was medicated 😉 ) we were wiped out and found a campsite with internet by 2pm and we blogged the afternoon away. We had 3 nights left of our Australian adventure but we also had so much to catch up on AND all the while we were trying to plan a wedding. It was beginning to look like it would take longer than we anticipated to track down the right people to help us arrange an aboriginal wedding. It is not a touristy or a done thing and is something we would like to do properly so we resigned ourselves to waiting until we return for our first Australian wedding and dammit, we would just have to carry on enjoying the freedom of the open roads of Victoria!
After spending yet another night freezing to death we bit the bullet and bought a heater. We slept toasty warm for the rest of the trip and very cheekily returned the heater the day we returned the campervan. Our lives had been saved by that thing but its life was not over!
We drove back to Melbourne a day early and decided not to waste any time and headed to the Dandenongs for the night where we boondocked and with our savings we had pie for breakfast from a famous little pie shop in the area. We had seen so much in our short 9 days. Ocean road, wildlife, vinyards, orchards, cheese makers, rock formations, mountains, lakes, tiny villages, big towns and Melbourne city. We had met lovely, kind people and even found a place we will add to the list of places we might like to live in Australia all in a 1200 mile drive.
We had a great time and were sad to leave the country but we have the rest of THIS adventure to live before we start on another one!

Find out what happens next on our travelling wedding adventure!