Road Trip!

Math has never been my best subject. That being said...2 girls + 1 campervan + 3 states + 1 territory + 4 cities/capitals + 10 days + 1400 miles + endless amounts of problems = A BLAST

I just got back from my big road trip with my roommate Lisa Mingo, and it was amazing! We got to see so many different places. We saw pretty much every terrain Australia has to offer from rainforests to tropical to dry desert to mountains. But, there were some bumps along the way. Actually, that is putting it mildly. Murphy's Law has a new meaning when it comes to this trip. Almost everything that could go wrong pretty much did. But, it all made for better stories and a more eventful trip!

The first problem we encountered happened about a week before we left. We were planning our trip around Mingo's last exam, which she thought was on June 25. So, we planned on leaving on June 11 and getting home on June 20. That way, Mingo would have time to study before her last final. So, about a week before we left, we booked everything: the campervan, the accommodations, and the flight home. I also thought that I would have a little money left over, so I planned a little trip up north to Townsville for June 21-25 for some quality beach time before coming home. Well...2 days after everything was official, Lisa checked her exam date. It was scheduled for June 15. I was mildly irate after hearing this. Granted, it was an honest mistake on her part, but still, I thought she had double checked before we booked everything. Clearly, I was wrong.

Immediately, we started going through our options. Cancelling or changing dates would just be way to expensive and I wasn't happy with either of those decisions. So, I grew a backbone and told her that the best, cheapest option is for her to by a roundtrip flight back to Newcastle the day of her exam. Luckily, we were scheduled to be in Melbourne on the 15, which is one of three cities that have direct flights into Newcastle's itty bitty airport. It all worked out...Lisa purchased a ticket from Melbourne to Newcastle. This way, she would only lose a day on the trip and it wouldn't cost me anything. End problem 1.

So, June 11 finally came along and it was time to go! We spent the night in Sydney and picked up our van the next day and headed down to Canberra. I was the first one to drive and, I'm not going to lie, it was a little scary. First, the van they gave us was a stick-shift. Nope...not in my book. I never learned how to drive one and neither had Lisa. Whoops! Luckily, they had an automatic for us! As most of you know...Australia is upside down. They drive on the opposite side of the road and car. It was extremely weird at first...but I got the hang of it quickly. Driving in a metropolitan area was actually very good for us at first. It was impossible to turn into the wrong lane because you are always following somebody! My proof behind this statement: while on our way to Canberra, we pulled onto a country road with nobody on it to get to a gas station. I definitely turned into the wrong lane and was driving down it for about 5 minutes before either of us even realized it haha. Whoops!

Anyways...the drive down to Canberra took about 4 hours. We came extremely close to running out of gas. Our van had about an 8 gallon tank and I swear it was getting like 3 miles to the gallon. HORRIBLE gas mileage...which led to some difficulties that I'll get to in a bit. We got to Canberra and got to look around and see some of the sites. It is an extremely smaller version of Washington D.C. Canberra is Australia's nation capital. It, like D.C., has its own territory. It is in the Australian Capital Territory. We got to see the new Parliament house and the old Parliament house, which were pretty cool. We also saw the Nation's History Museum. Canberra was our educational stop =) . That night was also our first night sleeping in the van. We found a parking ramp and parked there for the night...it only cost us $2!! Steal!

I'm going to admit, though, that first night was awful! It was about 20 degrees outside. If you guys were to see us, you probably would have died laughing. We were completely layered up in sweatpants and sweatshirts, curled up in tiny balls, & practically sleeping on top of one another. I was wearing a beanie and well. Each of us only had 2 blankets...which weren't very thick. It was horrible!!! We went to target at 7:00 the next morning and bought more blankets haha!

We left Canberra on the 13 and started our 8 hour trip to Melbourne. The drive was beautiful! And it was just the start of the beautiful landscapes!! It almost looked like we were in Ireland. Green hills everywhere full of sheep! The drive was long, but we kept ourselves fully entertained. It was the first time in months either of us had listened to a radio! We had all new songs to sing to!

Melbourne is, simply put, amazing! Sydney is still my favorite city, but Melbourne closely follows. I'm sure if I could have spent more than 2 days there, it could have surpassed Sydney. Downtown is full of life...shops, restaurants, and cafes are everywhere. There is a huge Tram system, making transportation there very easy. Our first day there was Lisa's only day there, so we hit up many sites. We went to the Victoria State Library, toured Melbourne Gaol (Jail), went through Captain Cook's (Australia's "Christopher Columbus") Cottage, and went to the very top of the city's tallest building and got to see all of Melbourne from up top. It was such a fun day!

The Gaol was my favorite part. It is in the middle of downtown, and was stopped being used back in 1993. Within the past 2 years, they've turned it into a memorial. We got to go in and look at all the cells and learn about Ned Kelly. Those of you who haven't heard of Ned Kelly, he is kind of like Australia's modern Robin Hood. We also go to be treated like prisoners by getting locked up in a pitch black cell for 10 minutes. It sounds kind of morbid, but it actually was pretty cool. It for sure makes me want to stay out of prison!!

Day 2 in Melbourne was my day alone, as Lisa flew up to Newcastle early morning and wouldn't be returning until late that night. It wasn't an action-filled day. I mostly did some souvenir shopping and toured more of the city.

I picked Lisa up from the airport when she landed and we headed off to start our journey down the Great Ocean Road. If any of you ever plan a trip to Australia, please, please please make this one of your stops! It was my favorite part of the trip. We divided it up into 4 days. Day 1 was driven at night, which wasn't very smart on our part. I'm super bummed actually because this is the part where you are literally driving along the cliffs with the ocean right there. I could see some of it (I was driving while Lisa slept), but I really wish I could have seen this part during sunlight. Day 2 on the Road was amazing though. We started in a town called Apollo Bay and walked around the beach there for a bit before heading our to Cape Otway. Cape Otway is the home to Australia's very first lighthouse. We got to tour it. It was so pretty. The sandstone cliffs were all around the lighthouse, making it just beautiful. We also got to see some of the Cape Otway Rainforest. Day 3 consisted of us going whale watching and seeing the 12 Apostles. Activity wise, it was a bummer day. We didn't see any whales and we just missed the 12 Apostles at sunset by 10 minutes! Scenery and landscape wise, it definitely did not disappoint. It is winter down there and the water is still aqua blue and gorgeous!! That night, we got to stay in a hotel. Not the van. Not a cheap hostel. An actual hotel. Basically, it was amazing. We had heat!! Haha! The room was super nice! We had a kitchen, a really nice bathroom, a huge bed, a living room, and CABLE!! We watched movies all night. We each showered 3 times as well. The bathroom was too nice to resist!! Especially compared to our nasty apartment bathroom. The next day was the last part of our journey on the Great Ocean Road. We made a lot of stops and random lookouts along the way, taking many many pictures!

After we were finished with the Great Ocean Road, we headed up north to Adelaide. Adelaide is located in the state of South Australia. We spent 2 nights there. There wasn't much to do, actually. Compared to the rest of our trip, Adelaide was pretty boring. We did some shopping and some site-seeing, but that is it. We were planning on going out to the infamous Kangaroo Island, but we were both out of money. Since our van had such horrible gas mileage...our gas estimates were off...WAY off. Before we left, we had, how do I put this...naive educated guesses (?), on how much gas would cost us. Well, it cost us our trip to Kangaroo Island. Huge bummer.

We returned the van on the second to last day and spent our last night in a hostel before flying out in the morning. Ha! That was another problem...I don't know if any of you are aware of this, but there are 3 countries in the world that have "half-hour timezones." Australia is one of these countries...the others being Iraq and India...not exactly the most "touristy" spots in the world. I have NEVER heard of this before, but it exists. Lisa and I were completely unaware of this the entire time in Adelaide. So...we missed our flight home. Actually, we didn't miss it, we missed the check in time by 20 minutes and they wouldn't check us in even though our plane wasn't supposed to leave for another half hour. So, we had to forfeit our tickets and book another flight with another airline. AWESOME...not. This trip was one of my very best memories in Australia...maybe even my life...by this was just the cherry on top of a trip full of road blocks!!

Even though we ran into many different problems, we still had such a good time. Most of the time, we were just laughing off all our problems. I mean, honestly, how could we get legitimately mad?? We were driving all around Australia!!! I wouldn't change anything that happened on that trip! Like our camping trip back in April...everything that went wrong just adds to the stories of it! It was super fun and super stressful all at the same time. But, when we put it in perspective, it was still an amazing trip and life experience.

I'm heading up to Townsville now for some quality beach time!! You will probably hear from me right before I head home. Enjoy the nice hot weather you guys are having!! I think you've earned it after such a long winter!!! =)

Mindy