After mooching around in the surf for a bit, we hit the road for our first night in Hahndorf, South Australia. Hahndorf is a quaint little town, that was originally settled by Germans, and you can get exciting things there, such as the Bavarian bum burner.
Having burnt our bums quite spectacularly in south east Asia, thank you very much, we eat in the bustling restaurant twinned with our hotel, where the food is outstanding (a recurrent theme in Australia, as we will discover and I will blog separately) and I have something distinctly lacking in Asia, a CHEESEBOARD. The wine isn't bad either.
We move on the following day to Langhorne Creek for a mammoth wine tasting session, which I've written about separately. From Langhorne, we undertake the three hour drive to Robe, a picture perfect seaside town, where it's 35 degrees and we hit he beach, before eating possibly the best lobster known to man.
After Robe, we head to Port Fairy, and as we stop to take the obligatory photo of Vicky under the 'Welcome to Victoria' sign, it starts to bloody rain. We are at first unsure as to what this moisture hitting the windscreen is, as we haven't seen rain for weeks. By the time we arrive in Port Fairy, it is belting down, so we have comfort food and hole up in our apartment in our PJ's. How rock n roll are we?
The highlight of the drive from Port Fairy to our next stop, Apollo Bay, are the amazing rock formations, including the 12 Apostles, that run along the coast for this part of the trip. Even in the pouring rain (yes, still) they are beautiful. Less beautiful is the human condom/poncho I have to wear to stop getting soaked, and which, for reasons of vanity, I took off for the photos.
On this drive, we also see cuddly little koalas in the trees, which necessitates several shouts of 'koala, pull over'. We make several, probably illegal, road manoeuvres in order to see the little beasts, and are rewarded with some awesome photos.
The twisty turny driving in the pouring rain puts us in a foul mood, so we crack open a lovely bottle of red wine when we arrive in Apollo Bay, before summoning the towns only taxi driver to collect us. He turns out to be a grumpy old bugger, who gives us a good telling off for not being outside our apartment on THE DOT of 6pm. We spend the rest of the evening (after a delicious scallop pizza) slagging him off spectacularly to the locals. Only the following day do we realise that word probably got back to him (hey, it's a small town) and we are therefore without transport for our second night in Apollo Bay.Which actually turns out OK, because, having spent the afternoon in the hot tub, we meet some lovely Brits (including a total hottie) and spend the evening barbecuing and playing drinking games with them.
Subsequently, the following day when we drive to Lorne, I am feeling somewhat grotty, and although Lorne is very pretty and I haul my sorry ass up to take some pictures in the evening, I'm ashamed to say that the highlight of the visit is discovering that one of the Aussie TV channels is showing Pillars of the Earth. I think by this point both Vicks and I are desperate to get to Melbourne and decamp for 10 days.
Ahhhh, Melbourne. The skyscrapers coming into view put a spring in our step, we negotiate the traffic systems and after driving around St Kilda twice, find our hotel. Our little car has driven 1200 kilometres and we haven't crashed it once. We settle into the apartment that will be home for the next ten days, and prepare ourselves for Neighbours night.........
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