Heading West

I was supposed to post this a couple of days ago and thought I did. Turns out I didn't. More updates from Ayres Rock and the outback to come!

Julie B


I wanted to hit a couple of different sites than the Nolans, so once we got to Sydney we split up at the airport. I went on a whim and bought a ticket for the very same day to Melbourne and headed south west for a couple of days. It was great there - so much more culture than Sydney. I chilled out there for a couple of days and met up with a fellow Newfie, with a Tilting connection! Thanks to my Aunt Shirley who got me in contact with Jenny whose Mom was a childhood friend of my dad, or something like that. I met up with her for a day and went to her apartment in the highest residential building in the world and the tallest tower in Melbourne! After spending a couple of days seeing the sights, meeting new people, relaxing in the heat, I joined a tour group, Groovy Grape on a 3 day trek to Adelaide, through the Great Ocean Road. If you ever see a car commercial where there's steep cliffs on one side and green ocean on the other, it was probably filmed on the Great Ocean Road. It was amazing!


We stopped at the 12 Apostles, a rock formation made of limestone that juts out into the sea:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Apostles_(Victoria)


Actually, there are only 8 apostles left standing. The rest of them fell down due to the constant crashing of waves. We went in helicopter around the coastline to see everything from a couple hundred feet up. The pictures are incredible! For most people, it was their first time in helicopter. I guess they didn't grow up on Fogo Island.. haha.

We stayed until sunset and watched the sun go down over the landmark. Very pretty!


The next day we spent around the coast looking at crazy rock formations like caves and grottos and gorges, etc and made our way to the Grampians, a mountain range between Adelaide and Melbourne and did a couple of 2 hour hikes around different parts. Again, the scenery was gorgeous and we saw lots of wildlife. Like Shanna and Julie, we saw some wild koalas, which were sleeping, like they do for 16 hrs a day.. we saw some emus and kangaroos (grey and white.. apparently theres about 70 different species of kangaroo.. who knew?) and cucaberras.



Adelaide was pretty too - not very big. There's about 1.1 million people in it, but it doesn't feel any bigger than St. John's. It was like the tour group continued, because we all became such good friends that we spend the next 3 days together! We went