More Cricket and F1!!

So the last time I posted I had just played against Beaumauris and we had had a convincing win. Next up were Spotswood, a team struggling towards the lower end of the table. Unfortunately they won the toss and decided to bat first on a hot day. Thankfully our bowling attack was far too strong for them and they were bowled out for 90 with yours truly getting 5/29! We had passed that total easily in the first day. The next week we came back and piled on the runs to end up on 320ish all out, helped by some excellent lower ordering batting! I myself made 48, but our number 9 and 10 both made very entertaining sixties!

Over the next few weeks I managed to get some work in a warehouse through some people at the cricket club. This involved taking magnetic fly screens out of one box branded as 'Buzz Off' and putting them in boxes branded as 'Mozzie Free'.

The next week the seconds were due to play against Airport West. Unfortunately they decided to forfeit the match!! This did however mean that we came top of the ladder and were guaranteed a home semi final. Luckily for me I received a call up to the 1s for that week so I still had some cricket on. The day kicked off with me being presented with my baggy blue ( this is a tradition at australian clubs for people playing their first game for the ones). On a stiflingly hot day we were put out to field . Despite having the opposition nearly down and out at 7/140 they recovered to 9/270 dec. I had a reasonable performance with the ball, bowling 15 overs 1/40 with two drops in the corded! Unfortunately we didn't do so well when we went out to bat and were two down at the end of play on the first day!!

During the following week I was fortunate enough to go to the Autralian Grand Prix on the Friday practice session! This was an amazing experience as I have never been to a formula 1 before. The noise those machines is incredible and I was suffering until some kind woman offered me some ear plugs!! Whilst I was here I was lucky enough to meet one of my friends dad, Mark Wilkin, who is responsible for producing the BBCs coverage of the formula 1. He kindly showed me around the BBC studios, which was a very eye opening experience!

The second week at Airport West was one to forget as we got bowled out for less than the follow on target! I contributed a meagre 1* at number 11 before my partner was out. Things didn't get much better second time round and I was one wicket away from having to bat twice in a day at number 11!

The following week I was lucky enough to catch both a rugby union game, where the Rebels lost to the Reds, and also a rugby league game, where Storm beat the Bulldogs.

Now it came down to the semi final. This saw us face up against Old Mentonians. a team we hadn't faced during the home and away season. This was a two day game played on consecutive days over one weekend. Sent in to bat first we made several good starts but unfortunately lost regular wickets and struggled to a score of 183 off 80 overs. Coming back the next day looking to make amends for our batting we started brightly and at one stage had the opposition 7/80. However a few strong partnerships saw them get to the final over with one wicket in hand requiring just 3 to win. This created some unbearable tension and saw a made dash single with a near run out to seal the game for the oppo. Needless to say this was pretty devastating for the team who had dominated the league for the whole season! Hopefully next year they will be able to go one further and being back a flag!!

This saw the end of my cricket in Australia and the next two weeks saw me relaxing enjoying the sites before heading on to Adelaide and the East coast!!

Melbourne to Sydney (via Adelaide); lots of work and even more play!

Firstly, I would like to apologise for the delay in posting this blog. Things have been fairly hectic as you will soon learn when you read on!

My last week in Melbourne feels like ages ago now, but it was a good one! As James mentioned previously, we visited Phillip Island and went up the Eureka Skydeck. My roommate and I also decided to take a trip out of the city and visit Yarra Bend Park which was very picturesque.

On our way back we stopped at Fitzroy Gardens and visited Cooks Cottage which was originally constructed in the UK before being shipped over!

One of my last days in Melbourne it hit 30oC so my roommate and I decided to take the opportunity to top up our tans on the beach before watching the sun set at St Kilda and going for drinks in the cutest bar in the middle of the yarra river!

As a final goodbye, my roommates and I decided to visit the 'Chill On' bar - an ice bar where it was -10oC! It was definitely a very fun experience that was followed by desserts at one of the poshest restaurants in Melbourne, courtesy of my roommate who waitressed there!

My final night in Melbourne was spent celebrating Chinese New Year along Southbank an watching the awesome fireworks go off! It was a very good way to end my time in Melbourne. :-)

From Melbourne, James and I headed down the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide which will be covered in the next blog. 

At the end of the Great Ocean Road, James dropped me off in Adelaide. I was lucky enough to be able to stay with the brother of a friend I worked with at the Olympics. Paul and his daughter, Rachel were very accommodating and made me feel at home. :-) The first evening, Paul's son Ceiran and his friend Will took me along to the Adelaide Fringe festival, which Im lead to believe is very similar to the Edinburgh Fringe, just bigger and last longer! During my time in Adelaide, I visited the Fringe a number of times including going to see one of the comedy acts one night which was really good.

My first two days in Adelaide were spent visiting the local sights of the South Australia Museum, National Wine Centre, Botanical Gardens and Glenelg beach.

I then headed off on a two day tour of Kangaroo Island. This was an awesome experience, where I visited Seal Bay and saw hundreds of sea lions lazing in the sun before kayaking at Vivonne Bay. We also took a trip to Flinders Chase Conservation Park to see koalas and kangaroos before staying the night at Flinders Chase Farm. Little did we know that during that evening there was a huge brushfire on the other side of the island which not only cut out all phone signal across the island, but also affected our journey back to the ferry the following evening!

The next morning we continued with our tour visiting the remarkable rocks (they truly are remarkable!!), Cape Du Couedic Lighthouse and Admirals Arch where there were hundreds of seals.

 

We finished our tour climbing 200+ steps to a lookout before sandboarding at Little Sahara an catching the ferry back to the mainland. All in all it was a pretty awesome trip and luckily the bush fire did not affect us too much!

Back in Adelaide I took a look round Tandanya Aboriginal Centre which was pretty interesting and has some awesome (and very expensive) art! Victoria Square and the Central Market were also visited on my way to Haighs Chocolate Factory where I went on a free tour....amazing!!

My final day was spent on a Barossa Valley winery tour which was so good! We visited 4 wineries in total, including Jacobs Creek and Kies who did the most amazing rose I've ever tasted! Lunchtime was conveniently spent at this winery where a number of us enjoyed some bottles of said rosé whilst stuffing ourselves with a true Aussie style BBQ! Safe to say most of us slept all the way back to the city!

A few days later I moved into the container that was to be my home for the next week. 16 of us in 8 bunk beds, living on site at the Clipsal V8 event in Adelaide. It was an experience but a very fun one at that and by far the best event I have ever worked for Cleanevent! Although the day after the event finished, we did have to spend 8 hours attempting to rake up confetti in 30oC+ whilst all hungover....it was hell!!!

From this event we headed back up to Melbourne which involved me driving a minibus for 4 hours!! For those of you that don't know, I hate reversing at the best of times, let alone in a 13 seater minibus!!

Back in Melbourne I worked at Moomba which is a free festival in Melbourne, and the Grand Prix. At the Grand Prix I was luckily enough to work in the Mercedes Benz lounge which was full of really posh corporate people which meant that a) I had very little to do as they are generally fairly tidy people, and b) I got to see Lewis Hamilton!!!! It was a good few days of work.

Whilst in Melbourne I also managed to find time to catch up with my old roommates Emma and Jana. Jana and I took a trip the Queen Victoria Night Market and enjoyed a couple of glasses of sangria, and Emma and I decided to have a go at beer pong in the hostel bar (which we were shocking at!)

Straight out of the Grand Prix myself and about 20 others headed up to Sydney to spend two weeks working at the Royal Easter Show. This was a tough but fun event and was the last event for most people. It was sad to say goodbye to everyone I had spent the past month or so working with and getting to know but hopefully I will get to see a fair few of them again! :-)

After a final fairwell night out in Sydney I boarded a plane to Cairns where my East Coast adventure was to begin!

I hope everyone back home had an awesome Easter and you are all taking care!

Less than 4 months now til I return to the UK so I hope you're all getting prepared!!

Lots of love

X x x

Great Ocean Road!

After a few relaxing days in Melbourne it was time to get our campervan and head along the Great Ocean Road. Our campervan, which was decorated with flowers (the company we used was called Hippie Camper!), was a similar size to the scooby doo campervan from the cartoons. It's safe to say it took a while to get used to driving it as it is nothing like driving the fiesta and focus we are used to driving! After sorting out all the essentials we needed for the next week we hit the road and headed down the motorway to Geelong. This is about an hour from Melbourne and we got a bit of a surprise when we arrived as there was a triathlon race going on through the town. This was good to watch for a bit even if it did make us both feel ridiculously unfit!

After Geelong we continued on to Torquay and the start of the Great Ocean Road!! As Em's parents had spent a couple of days on the GOR a few weeks before, they suggested we pop into the information centre to stock up on maps and guides before continuing our trip. in true James style, he forgot his swimmers so once he'd purchased a new pair we were on our way! Following the advice from the helpful people at the information centre we paid a visit to the magnificent viewpoints at Bells Beach and Point Addis.

 

From here we headed to Angelsea Golf Club, known for being a great place to see kangaroos. Unfortunately we only managed to see one; a great spot by Em in the distance! From here we pressed on to Airleys Inlet and Lorne beaches as well as taking in Erskine falls and Teddys lookout along the way. At Lorne we stopped for amazing and much needed ice cream! (Ems latest obsession!)

The Cumberland and Wye river mouths were next on out agenda providing more great views, before we reached the Kennett River mouth and the Grey River Road. This was arguably one of the highlights of our first day as we got to see loads of wild Koalas!! Unfortunately Em also managed to stack it out of nowhere trying to get in the van and had to be bandaged up very effectively by James! After that minor emergency we proceeded on to Apollo Bay where we set up camp on the beachfront for the evening.

After packing up the campervan, we started our morning with a walk along Apollo Bay beach! From this experience we decided we would not be packing up the campervan every morning as it was far too complicated and time consuming! From Apollo Bay we went to Maits Rest rainforest walk which was completly different to anything we had seen in Australia so far and again gave us a look at some beautiful scenery and forest areas. Cape Otway lighthouse, which is the oldest working lighthouse in Australia, was our next stop providing some stunning views of the coastline. We also had a close encounter with a kangaroo when we were walking through the woods nearby the lighthouse. Having not seen it we walked to within 2 metres of it and then got a massive shock when it stood up and started hopping about! After initially hopping away from us the kangaroo decided to come back and investigate the area further. Whilst we were trying to take photos it thought it would be hilarious to play peekaboo with us from behind a sculpture, resulting in many photos with no kangaroo in!!

After a quick argument about petrol which saw us retrace our steps a bit we made it to Otway Fly Walkway. This is a walkway suspended 30m above the ground in the surrounding rainforest; needless to say James didn't cope exceptionally well especially with the the 60m high tower! But again it did give some fantastic views of the rainforest from an unbelievable viewpoint.

Following Otway Fly we arrived in Port Campbell national park which contains several tourist hotspots including; Gibson Steps, The Tweleve Apostles ( of which there are only 7 left!), Loch Ard Gorge, London Bridge and The Grotto. These all provided unbelievable views of the coastline and the sample of pictures here don't really do justice to how good it was!

We decided to watch the sunset over the Bay of Islands, which in our opinion was better than the Twelve Apostles, before spending the night in a truck stop in Peterborough.

A morning walk on Peterborough beach was followed by seeing the Bay of Islands in the daylight and then driving up to Warrnambool beach. We then headed to the Tower Hill reserve where there was a koala sleeping in a tree about 5 metres from our van. Unfortunately, we didn't see this koala until we returned from our walks and found a group of people huddled round the tree in front of our camper taking lots of photos! Whilst at Tower Hill reserve we did the peak walk and the lava mouth walk both giving some great views of the surrounding area.

From here we moved on to Port Fairy, which had a really nice beach and port area. If you hadn't gathered already, this trip was dominated by beaches!

Portland was only just down the road from Port Fairy and again provided some great views of the coastline, as well as the oldest three storey building in Victoria. The most impressive thing about Portland wasnt actually in Portland though and required a trip to Cape Bridgewater to see the petrified forest and the blowholes. Whilst on our way we came across a snake in the road, which terrified James until we realised it was basically dead! On our way back to Portland we passed through the Cape Bridgewater lakes and saw lots of kangaroos soaking up the sun! From Portland we drove the 180km up to the Grampians and stayed in Halls Gap, where our campervan was surrounded by resident kanagaroos!! It was here that we learnt that joeys suckling on their mothers is a hilarious, but dodgey sight to see whilst eating dinner!!

With a whole day to spend in the magnificent Grampians we were in for a lot of walking! First up was the 4km round trip to the pinnacles, giving more more excellent photo opportunities!! It did however almost ruin us both getting there!

After this more exerting walk, we did some of the smaller walks around the Grampians such as Mackenzie falls, Rees lookout, the Balconies and the Boroka lookout each providing a unique insight into the Grampians and all they had to offer.

Before leaving for Mount Gambier we had to stop at the recommended ice cream place and stock up on some fudge for the journey! Just past the border into South Australia we stopped at Umpherston Sinkhole to cook dinner and somehow ended up on a locally organised possum watch; some people were super keen!! We didn't actually see a possum so was even more hilarious watching these people jump at the slightest of movements in the bushes!

After stopping over in another truck stop that night, we visited Umpherston sinkhole in the morning before moving on to the Blue Lake, which unsurprisingly is.... a Blue Lake. However, scientists aren't quite sure why it turns from grey to blue for 6 months of the year! Alongside the Blue lake is the Valley lake with a lookout walk to the top of mount Gambier giving a great view of the South Australian countryside. As we had made good progress throughout the day we were able to take the costal road up towards Adelaide and on our way we managed to encompass a Beachport driving tour, a blissful hour sunbathing in Robe followed by even more ice cream! We then headed up through Coorong National Park and we we approached Strathalbyn passed through several vineyards, which all looked very impressive!!

After a good Thai takeaway we spent the night in Strathalbyn. The next morning we drove into central Adelaide where Em got dropped off at Paul's, before James headed on the long journey back to Melbourne.

The Great Ocean Road trip is a definite must for anyone visiting Australia!!! :-)

Take care!

X x x