Home time

It seems that we haven’t won lotto in the past six weeks and so sadly it’s time for the journey to end.

Here’s to a great road trip!

Now… to start planning our next big adventure …

Melbourne and the elephants

With two nights to go and improved weather we left Lorne and headed into Melbourne.

Faced with an amazing array of four (!!) caravan parks in the entire metropolitan area we opted for the one closest to town. By no means cheap but it has done the job.

In our travels in town so far we have been impressed with these lovely little elephants- presumably an art installation??

We visited the zoo- what a fantastic place! Kids get in for free on weekends making it a Mecca for the under 10s!

You guessed it – more elephants..

Other highlights have been Chinatown…

… Hunter’s first ride on a Melbourne tram…

… and the street art.

Hunter in particular is very inspired and already talking about asking to use someone’s wall to paint on. Maybe the culture of this fantastic city has rubbed off. Watch out world!

Lovely Lorne

Our three nights in Lorne were all stormy and wet, making us very glad not to be in the tent!

Check out these for stormy skies:

We did however manage to fit in some fishing off the jetty.

We had an unbelievable catch – at one point we were reeling in one after the other – great fun. Here they are, lined up ready for filleting.

The weather provided a great excuse to do little other than enjoy the pool, eat and drink and of course get in a few rounds of Monopoly.

Naturally on our last day the sun came out:

Such is life!

Wellington to Lorne via Portland and the Great Ocean Road

Our first surprise on leaving Wellington was that we had to get a ferry to do so! (or travel an extra 40 km).

How fun and a great way to start the morning. Even better, it was free (hello, Bruny Island Ferry).

The fabulous Coorong wetlands.

Love these speeding signs!

With fairly constant rain and a pretty dismal forecast (cold, wet and windy) we decided to opt for a cheap and cheerful hotel in Portland.

After leaving Portland the next morning we checked out the “petrified forest” (not really a petrified forest at all but beautiful nonetheless).

Loving the nearby wind farm:

The coastline in this part of the world is just incredible!

As is the hinterland:

With more inclement weather forecast we did some Internet searching for hotels in Lorne and managed to score a bargain and a half – so, this is where we will be for the next 2 nights, living it up in relative comfort, before heading closer to Melbourne for our last two nights before boarding the spirit and very reluctantly heading home.

Message from Holly :

This morning a bird flew into our apartment and tried to eat our breakfast and then a cockatoo landed on our balcony railing and wouldn’t go away here is a photo of it . We called it cocky.

The Flinders Ranges to Wellington

Today’s travels involved our first set of traffic lights since Alice Springs:

a clever road sign:

and some incredible scenery:

We took the scenic route south, taking in Clare (what a town!! Would move there in a heartbeat) and Jim Barry’s cellar door.

We also accidentally took in the Angus River drive through Macclesfield because of a navigational error and ended up in Wellington instead of our desired destination of the Coorong. Nothing like a bit of unplanned adventure!