The three of us arrived to our hostel - Habitat HQ - at about 11am and spent the morning walking around St Kildas (the area we were staying). Its really nice with a bit of a London/ Bristol atmosphere which I like. Theres also a lot of cake shops which I love. We had some cake and some lunch and then headed to the memorial park where we met up with Becki's friends that she had met in America. It was Anzac day in Australia on the 25th which is the equivalent of our memorial day on November 11th but they commemorate in very different style than us. Rather than silences in Melbourne there is a celebratory AFL (Australian football league) game - which we attended - and a parade - which we sadly missed. The game was between Essendon (the team we were told we support and the team that would lose quite severely) and Collingwood (the much better team). Despite supporting the worse team the game was great fun to watch, like a mix between football and rugby but with less rules.
We headed back to our hostel for the night after the game ready for the next day. We were finally reunited with Amy on the Monday and it was so great to be back as the four of us. We spent the day looking around Melbourne's CBD, hitting the tourist spots like Federation Square, Hozier Street and South Bank. Melbourne town is really lovely and its skyline is beautiful, in general I really like it.
In the evening we caught the train to Glen Waverly - a district just outside of Melbourne - where we got dinner in a burger place that Kate has been looking forward to since before we left, I think the pictures that she's seen are the main reason she wanted to come to Australia. The burger was fantastic to be fair and we were all very pleased.
The next day we were up early to pick up our rental car and start our tour. We first headed to a post office depot (not very exciting) to pick up Becki's passport. Next stop was Brighton Beach (Australians seem to name everything after the UK) to see the colourful beach huts. After that we had lunch and drove to Mount Martha which I found very exciting, I'm not sure anyone else shared in that excitement though to be honest.
Our last stop (and the reason for our roadtrip) was phillip Island to see the penguins. The penguins live wild there and head inland from the sea each night to sleep behind the beach. The penguins were really small (about 33cms) and absolutely adorable. Seeing them get knocked over by waves was just too cute. The car we hired was for two days and was an automatic Toyota. Amy and I shared the driving for the first day seeing and Katie and Becki had done the driving in Cairns. Fortunately we were able to put all of us as drivers on this policy for no extra cost which meant that we could share the driving the next day and we could all drive the great ocean road.
We were up even earlier on the Thursday in order to beach the traffic. We picked Amy up at about 7.30am and we were off. The drive to the great ocean road was longer than expected and took around an hour and a half and then we were there. The road is really famous and runs from Melbourne to Adelaide. Its got some great views and a lot of it runs along the cliffs and the sea.
The main point of the road is some of the stops though. The first stop we made was bells beach where we watched some surfers for a while. We also spotted some wild kangaroos which was very exciting. Next was Aireys Inlet Lighthouse and the memorial archway. After the archway we stopped at a beach near Lorne to eat our packed lunched and then to the kennet river for some koala, parrot and cockatoo spotting. Next up was the main stop, the twelve apostles and last but not least was the Loch Ard Gorge. At this point the weather had turned and it had started raining and we were all tired from all day driving so we headed back. The journey home took longer than expected as our satnav took us to the wrong place once we got back to Melbourne, but we arrived at long last, all very tired and definitely ready for bed having driven pretty much constantly from 7.30am to 9.30pm.
We spent our last day in Melbourne - and our last day in Oz - doing thr Ramsay Street Neighbours tour. It was about 3 hours in total and we got to see the real street they use to film and some of the set. We also got met one of the stars (that none of us had heard of or seen before) and saw two Toady and Steph walking around the set as we were going to the toilet. It was all very exciting, was just a shame about the weather - very rainy. The afternoon was spent wandering around st Kildas again, looking for a jumper for Becki. The trip was successful and she wore the jumper out for dinner with Amy's friends who are currently living in Melbourne who shes been paying for. The restaurant was a 'pay what you think its worth' type restaurant which was very interesting, if not a bit awkward, because I've never been to one like that before. The food was ok, Kate and I had the thali platter (basically dhal and a veggie curry) and the others all had a green curry.
Then we left for the airport. We arrived there about 3 and a half hours before our flight but didn't manage to check in for about an hour and a half because the staff were awful. They sent us to queue in four different places and were so rude, refusing to help us when the machines wouldn't check us in despite us not being able to use the machines because we had foreign passports. I don't think I've ever been treated so badly and by such a rude staff as a whole, it was so bad it was laughable. Then security weren't much better, not rude but just didn't seem to care at all. But we made it. We are now sat in Wellington airport waiting for our connection to Aukland. Its been a long and mostly sleepless night and we are definitely looking forward to a bed tonight and to a good long sleep!
Australia was in general lovely. I liked a lot of the places but nowhere as much as I like places in the UK. It was completely different to Asia, pretty much just a bigger Uk but with better weather, most of the time anyway, and with swearing on the radio. I'm looking forward to New Zealand as I've heard nothing but good things about it, most people saying its the best place they've been. I am not so much looking forward to the cold weather though, but it might be good to reacclimatise to the UK, although I'll lose my tan before I even get home.
