The Big Day Out

& Melbourne



So after our R&R on kangaroo island we started our trip towards Melbourne. This took us to Torquay where we thought “what do people do in Torquay”? That’s right we decided to treat ourselves to fish and chips because what else do u do in Torquay. After our lunch we started on the Great Ocean Road which is said to be in the top five drives u can do anywhere in the world. I thought to my self how good can a drive be but take it from me its probably the best stretch of road I ever driven on. It had it all, amazing views, twisted roads. I felt like a rally driver apart from the fact I’d done most of the drive at about 40kmph. A lot of other people had the right idea and were doing the drive in Ferrari’s and many other cool sports cars. The drive of about 130km took us the best part of the day to do. A piece of me wished we had more time to explore the seaside towns and beaches but we had a deadline to get to Melbourne ready for the BDO ( big day out). But we did mange to stop at th 12 apostles which is another famous aussie rock site.

great ocean road views

12 apostles ( well 3 of them)

big day out

We reached Melbourne on the Australia Day long weekend. We booked into our caravan site and went across the road to celebrate over a few quiet beers. The bar we picked was a quite pub where much to our delight they were doing $12 jugs of beer. So we settled down for a few jugs. These few jugs soon turned in 8 jugs and at that point we thought it was best to call it a night so we stumbled back across the road to our camper and went to bed ready to wake up to the hangover we all knew was coming.
The next morning I awoke to find not only was there no sick anywhere in the campervan but also no sign of a headache. Success. I turned to Shannon to tell her about my stroke of luck only to find Shannon was not quite as lucky as me and was suffering from a small hangover. Our adopted traveller trev “the cougar” was also suffering. Maybe I have super powers I thought to myself. This theory was quickly proven wrong as I visited to WC to have the mother of all beer sh%ts . Sunday soon arrived and me and Shannon headed of to the BDO this is the Australian version of Glastonbury. The only different is it is sunny here. The bands we saw were as follows - the killers, muse, my chemical romance , Eskimo Joe, kasabian, evermore plus a few others. So EJ there are a few more I can tell u about how I seen them and u haven’t when I return.
After checking out what Melbourne had to offer we said our goodbyes to the cougar and headed to Canberra the capital of Australia. When we arrived we were in luck. Parliament had just started so we decided to go and sit in on Prime Minster question time. This was of course just like England where people just shouted, hurled abuse and mocked each other. It made me wonder if the Australian people were not a little embarrassed to have these clowns as there leaders. never mind. Canberra was quite nice but again we were on the move this time toward the Mecca of all backpackers SYDNEY….
We arrived at the only backpackers with car parking. The plus points is it is a stone throw from the main city and not many people hear. The down points was it was a sh%t hole and the manager was a complete piss head
So here we are in Sydney. I will do a full blog on this when I have explored more and also there’ll be a guest appearance from mini man
Shake and bake everybody.

Kangaroo island



So after our mini road trip with my brother we dropped him off at the airport and set out on our long trip across Australia. We had also picked up another passenger for this trip his name was Trevor and was ask to leave the OFS due to a water leak. The trip we had planned was Perth to Adelaide, in distance wise this is the same from London to Moscow so as u can guess going at 50mph this was going to be a long trip.
Our first port of call was Esperance. This is known for having some of the best beaches in Australia, if not the world. The day and a half trip took us 2 and half days due to the storm I mentioned in the last blog, which had taken out the only bridge into Esperance so instead of a nice easy drive we had to make a 160km trip back up to the last town and then a 130km trip on a unsealed road ( the red ones u see in the films) to get there. The only benefit of this was we went past the rabbit proof fence that runs across Australia and what u may know from the film about 3 young abbo kids using the fences to get back to their parents after being taken away by the government -a true story by all accounts. Even though I question it because all the abbo’s I met were tanked up on goon (cheap wine) or high on spray paints. Anyway Esperance lived up to its reputations the beaches were amazing. So after leaving we headed north to Norseman and then started our trip across the Nullabor. The Nullabor is a stretch of road that links WA to SA it runs about 1300km and is boring to boot. Nullabor is bad Latin for no tree’s and even though there were a few trees that was about it. There is also a 90mile stretch of road(146.6km) that is completely straight no hills or turns so for 2 hours I drove with no turning or changing gear or anything. It certainly was a character building experience.
The trip across the Nullabor took 3days and as irony has it, as soon as we had crossed it we ran out of petrol and we were only 4km from the petrol station. The rest of the trip to Adelaide was uneventful me, Shannon and Trev shared the driving and we got there in one piece. Adelaide was a nice place. We looked around town went to a shark museum. We had also booked our trip to kangaroo island which is the 3rd biggest Australian island and is just off the coast. To my disappointment kangaroo island is NOT a island run by kangaroo’s but it was an island with more wildlife than u could shake a hairy stick at. The camp sites we stayed at had koalas up trees outside our van and tammar wallabies running around. We were told not to feed them but I thought it wouldn’t be too bad to feed them so I set out with my piece of bread and started to feed 3 cute little wallabies. This soon turned into a bad idea when these 3 cute cuddly animals turned into bloodthirsty creatures all fighting for the right for my tasty bread. So I retreated to the van and left them to continue the fight for the remaining scraps. Also we visited a national park and a wildlife centre where u are allowed to feed the animals well the kangaroos anyway, so again I rebelled and fed the kangaroo food to parrots and also stole some straw to feed the donkeys which again I should of thought about because no sooner had I started to feed these tame little animals, when a big f@$K off water buffalo turned up and started poking its nose in. So I grabbed some more straw for him chucked it in and made my getaway before the staff noticed me feeding animals I shouldn’t be. The kangaroo enclosure was cool u were allowed in and all the kangaroos came running ( I think they only get fed when people buy the food ) so me and Trev decided to be the red cross and dished out the rations making sure no hungry kangaroo was left unfed. Shannon tried to feed one but got a little scared bless her. That night I slept well knowing the good deeds I had done even though I felt a little guilty that a few weeks before I was eating kangaroo.
Our visit to the national park was good we went to seal beach which is only 1 of 3 Australian seal colonies in Australia. We were allowed on the beaches and were only a few yards from the seals. I admit they only seem to sleep but we were told they do this because every 3 days they go out to sea and hunt none stop for 3days with no sleep sometimes going as far as 70km out to sea. We also went to the remarkable rock which is a rock that is, well, remarkable I suppose . We also saw on our trip some New Zealand Fur Seals and pelicans. If u check the picture of the pelican out u will see that its looks like someone has just got some fake eyes and stuck them on the bird . .

This concludes my brief blog on kangaroo island my next post will be off Melbourne and the big day out .
Peace out

here is my new posing shot i done for time magazine man of the decade