Australia Road Trip (After our engagement): September 2015

We had an easy drive back to Coober Pedy. I wanted to buy an opal. Javier was making fun of me. He said that by giving me a ring, he had opened up a pandora’s box, and now I wanted more and more jewelry, but it just seemed fitting to buy an opal in Australia, and why not the city they are mined? I had something specific in mind, and I didn’t find anything that fit the bill, so in the end, I didn’t get anything. 

Coober Pedy has a drive-in theater that’s only open on Saturdays. We were in luck! After checking into the same hotel as last time, we headed into town for shopping, refilling gas, and cleaning our windshield. Back at home, we popped some popcorn that we had been carrying since Malaysia, ordered a pizza, and headed over to the drive-in.

at the drive-in. PIzza!!

I remember drive-ins from when I was a child. I loved them. My parents made it so fun for us. We had an old van that had a bed in the back, well the space for a bed. My dad would reverse the van into the spot, we’d put the little speaker on our window, my mom would set out sleeping bags for me and my brother, we’d have a few snacks, put on our pajamas, and wait for the movie. Sometimes we made it through the whole thing, many times, not. The drive-in evokes such happy memories for me, I couldn’t wait to go again. Javier had never been, so he was really excited as well. While watching the movie from the front seat of a sedan is nothing like being a kid in the back of your parent’s van, it was still a really fun experience. We ate our pizza and popcorn and were instructed by a local guy next to us to tune into the radio station provided instead of using the speaker- it worked much better. 🙂 

We planned to start early the next morning, but slept in instead. Our destination for the day was Adelaide, where just earlier in the week had experienced snow and hail. We saw images on the news of kids sledding on their boogie boards. As we watched the news during breakfast, there was a live feed from Adelaide which looked bright and sunny while the ticker tape showed: Adelaide: 20C, rain. We’ll just have to wait and see. 

Adelaide

On the road to Adelaide, we passed by several freshly dead kangaroos. During the past few days, we saw many kangaroos, wombats, and cows, dead and moved off to the side of the road. We kind of got used to seeing them. These were different. They were fresh. Some of them were intact and lying in the middle of the road, but a couple of them had been run over with their bright red flesh exposed. Kinda graphic…sorry. 

Adelaide

We arrived in Adelaide and booked a hotel while sitting in said hotel’s lobby. Our neighborhood was super seedy. Every other building was either a low-class casino, strip club, or “massage” parlor. We liked it. It had character. There were many people sitting on the street, smoking shisha because in between all the other classy buildings were middle eastern shisha/restaurant shops. We had dinner and walked around the neighborhood to walk it off. The highlight: a couple of white aussie guys rapping on the sidewalk. They had a speaker and beats, and were rapping with their accents. We had to laugh, but props to them. You gotta start somewhere, even on the hard streets of Adelaide. 

Pho time

We decided to spend an extra day in Adelaide just to rest. Also, we hadn’t yet told our families that we were engaged. Because of the time difference, Javier’s parent’s are difficult to catch together outside of the weekend. Javier wanted to tell them together, so we waited for the weekend to tell both our families. After a morning face time session, we set out to walk a bit further. We found a pho restaurant for lunch. Between the pho and our previous days of driving, neither of us had much energy for anything. We had plans to exercise and see more sights. We did neither. 

Twelve apostles.

In the morning, we set out for the 12 apostles. We originally thought we would stay in a town just before the attraction, and see the 12 apostles the following day. After booking the B&B, Javier did some research and decided that he wanted to see the 12 apostles at sunset. So, we zoomed right past our B&B and drove the 25 minutes to the 12 apostles. The 12 apostles were recently renamed, why, I don’t know. The original name was the Sow and Piglets. I kinda like that one better. The 12 apostles were formed over several thousands of years. The cliffside is made out of limestone. Over time, the waves batter the walls, fill in the holes, and erodes the stone. Eventually, the rock get eroded away, and some of the stronger, less porous rock are left as the rest is washed away. It is actually pretty amazing to see how far the land has eroded away. It was cold at the apostles. Compounded by the wind, it was uncomfortably cold.

Twelve apostles

Javier took lots of pictures. I had forgotten what it was like to be in a tourist trap, and found that I was fairly annoyed.

On the way back to the B&B, we stopped for gas and dinner in a cute, yet overpriced, coastal town. We were grumbling a bit at the fact that we were backtracking until we arrived at our home for the night. The house was huge and gorgeous. Our host, Kathy, was very kind and welcoming. She gave us the quick tour, and we noticed some Peruvian pictures and art on the walls.

B&B

The house looks like a country manor, complete with a beautiful claw-foot tub. She also took the liberty of turning on our heating blanket, so when we crawled into bed, it was nice and toasty. 

Kathy made us breakfast in the morning, where we met the other occupants for the night. There were three guys, a German, American and Brit. They too were on a road trip. We talked with them for a while. They all work in oil, with the German and American living in Oman, and the Brit in Qatar. They were an interesting crew, and we had nice conversation with them. 

Bay of Islands

Before we took off, Kathy had a little map printed out for us with some highlights circled. Along the coast to Melbourne there are many attractions. She gave us her opinions on which were the best, and we decided on a few to catch on the way. We stopped to see the grotto, the arch and the bay of islands. The bay of Islands look very similar to the 12 apostles and the other two are different land formations. We stopped again at the 12 apostles, and made our way to cape Otway. We went up the lighthouse and walked the grounds. It was very peaceful.

the lighthouse

Kathy had said that Cape Otway was a place to see koalas, but the lady at the lighthouse said that they no longer had the trees to support the koalas, so there haven’t been any around for years. This made sense. As we were driving toward the cape, we drove through sections of dense, leafy, Eucalyptus trees, but as we drove closer, the trees looked dead, many were burned, and none had any leaves. I told Javier, we should stop in the area with the healthy trees, and just watch for koalas. We both didn’t think that was a good idea, but there weren’t really any other options if we wanted to try and see them wild. As we started nearing the area, we noticed cars parked on the side of the road. Sure enough, there they were! Just little balls of fur asleep in the branches. Most were too high to see clearly, and there weren’t that many. In that area, we only saw 3. We were still happy, though. After a little while watching them, we moved forward, on the lookout. We spotted another on our own. He or she was asleep, but as we stood there he woke up, stretched out, gave himself a good scratch and repositioned. There was another koala eating the leaves. We stood there for what seemed like forever just watching her. After maybe 5 minutes of so, we saw some more movement. She had a baby in her pouch! The little guy stretched out and started grabbling and eating the leaves as well. It was too cute! When we were about to leave,

Sleepy Koala

I spotted another fat guy right above our car. He was only sleeping, but he was positioned in a way, and was low enough, to see clearly see his sleeping face. We were both so happy. 

Time was moving way too fast for us. We still had a couple more stops before Melbourne, and not that much daylight. Kathy had told us that the kangaroos come out for a round of golf in the evenings, in this specific town. Javier didn’t seem too sold on the idea, but since we had only see two live kangaroos on the side of the road as we zoomed by, I wanted to try and see if they would be out. There were tons of kangaroos! Some of them had collars and were tagged, while others were wild.

Roos

We watched them eat, hop, and were amused by the little Joeys that would stick legs, tail, and heads out of their mama’s pouches. A couple of the males were big, like over 6 ft tall kind of big. They were all very relaxed, but I thought…those guys could really do some damage if they wanted.

We drove to Torquay, which is where the big three (Ripcurl, Billabong, and Quicksilver) all started. Javier wanted to go shopping there, but we missing them by 30 minutes. Sad for Javier, happy for our wallets. 

To see more pictures of Australia, click HERE.