Saying goodbye to Ralphie...

Hello fellow blog readers!

Today it's me (Sara) writing to you as Tom is busy reading his book and I have nothing to read at the moment! For the record I have read 13 books since starting this trip, 11 of which were whilst in South East Asia (not that I'm counting or keeping a star rating of every book!!)

First thing, we have uploaded loads of photos on our flickr account so you can go and have a look! http://www.flickr.com/photos/35491783@N03/

Tom and I are doing very well and today we reached the end of our campervan experience, which although it's sad, it's also nice to be back into a normal life of sleeping in a bed and carrying our bags around! It was loads of fun though and even with all the cold and rain we really enjoyed the experience!

As a quick update, for those of you who don't know, Tom and I changed our flights once again and we are now leaving Australia on the 26th May (2 days before my B-day!!) to go back into South East Asia- nothing against New Zealand and Australia but we just really (!!!) loved Asia and feel that there is still a lot for is to experience and see back there, in the warmth of the land of smiles! We even miss the people selling us loads of useless stuff and the tuk tuk drives everywhere!

Now back to Australia, we left you in Torquay- the land of surf- and a lot has happened since! Gemma, please go and check a photo on our Flickr account with the most amazing chocolate crepe ever!!

We started our journey on the Great Ocean Road which is just absolutely beautiful- just driving along with the sea and the massive cliffs hanging on your side is an unique experience! So we left Torquay and drove straight to the Ottway National Park- it took us a while as we stopped a lot to take in all the views! We managed to get to the national park in time to look for a free camping site to stay the night, this was probably one of the best nights we had camping! We arrived at the campsite and went for a short walk where we saw a family of Koalas eating on the trees literally only a few meters from us! We then got back and decided to make a fire for the night to we spent a few hours gathering wood and Tom destroyed a tree that we thought it was dead by snapping one of its branches in half. With a bit of help from one of the guys staying at the site we managed to gather enough wood to last us most of the night! And what a fire it was! You would all be so proud- it was roaring!! So tom and I spent the night keeping warm by the fire, sitting under the starts, which was really nice!

The next day we decided to explore Ottway national park and went to a really cool rainforest where they built this tree top thing 9basically its a 600 mts long, 25 mt high elevated tree top walk- kind of like bridges on top of the tress so you could walk around and see the rainforest at its best!). My camera ran out of battery at this point (typical) so the reat of the day doesn't have any photographic evidence, which is a shame, as we drove to the 12 Apostles next which was just stunning! It's basically a lookout with nothing between us and Antarctica but the amazing Southern Ocean -if you look south- but if you look West, across three oceans, you would be looking at the Argentinean coast line. In between you can contemplate the ruins of cliffs, scattered around the ocean, as a result of its erosion by the wind, rain and forceful waters. The day was sunny so the sights were just stunning!
We stayed in Warnambool that night which was pretty uneventful apart from the fact that we cooked like a fish stew with prawns (sim mae, eu comi camaroes!!) and sword shark and half way through the night I had to go and be sick (maybe the prawns?)...
From Warnambool we drove to Nelson which is the smallest town in the world (not a fact but felt that way!)and Tom and i spent a few hours down the local (and only) pub in town!

From Nelson we drove to Kingston (reminded us of you Gem Gems!!), where we stayed in another very quiet town where the highlight was going for an after dinner walk by the beach!

The last two days with Ralphie (for those of you not following that's our campervan) and went to Barossa valley! A lot of people would be soo jealous of us as this is the biggest wine region of Australia where all you can see is vineyard after vineyard including Jacobs Creek's! Tom and I went on the obligatory wine tour and tasted some very fine wines and fortified wines such as a 100 year old port! (I couldn't stop thinking about Strange and Jon B!! but I do have pictures!! The village here is gorgeous and really picturesque- we loved this place soo much!

So today we arrived in Adelaide and dropped Ralphie off! So sad... but we are staying at a very cool hostel where they give us free apple pie at 20h! Yummy!!! And tomorrow we are hiring some bikes (for free!!) from across the road to go and explore the city before leaving to Brisbane on Wednesday!

Uff....I guess I'm done! Jess, welcome back to England- I will reply to you next time I'm online!! Everyone else, miss you lots and hopefully speak soon! XXXX Muahhhh

Tom & Sara