Karen and Malc's Gap Years: December 2011

Thursday, 29 December 2011

Christmas in Australia

19th-28th December 2011

After a 1hr 30 flight from Melbourne (where we were sitting just behind Shane Warne, Liz Hurley, their kids and the rest of the Melbourne Stars cricket team!), we caught a bus which took us 70km north to Mountain Creek on the Sunhsine Coast. Here we're staying in the new home of Mark and Alisha who are visting relly's in Adelaide for Christmas. We're less than 10 minutes from many magnificent beaches and the seaside esplanades of Mooloolaba, Caloundra and only 30 minutes from the trendy Noosa.

A cyclone was raging at the "Top End"(as the aussies refer to it) of Australia - resulting in storms and huge sea swells down the coastline. Bad luck for swimmers but the surfers loved it! On Christmas Eve we had rain all day (a total of 78cm) but that made it a little cooler - the temparature varies between 20 and 30 celcius - and the following days have been fantastic weather all day every day.

Another crowded beach day before the rain

Wicked waves on Christmas Day

We spent most of Christmas at the beach and cooked lots of seafood over the three days - Prawns, Oysters, Moreton Bay Bugs and a huge fillet of a type of snapper. We spent MUCH more than we have ever spent on a turkey and all the trimmings but it was really terrific.

Moreton Bay Bugs

They even floodlit the beach at night and had entertainers along the boardwalk................

Stormy beach on Christmas Eve

Saturday, 24 December 2011

Ballarat and Sovereign Hill

15th-19th December 2011

Ballarat - only about 60k north of Peterborough and 80k nw of Melbourne - is a lovely, well preserved, town built as a result of the gold rush in the 1800's. They have preserved a lot of buildings in the town as well as part of the original town used by the gold diggers, including a lot of the old mines which you can also visit. Actors and volunteers still dress up and play characters from that time in the old town called Sovereign Hill - most of which cotains the original structures. We stayed at the refurbished George Hotel - very nicely done - and had a lovely but expensive meal at the bistro next door. Fortune shone on us however and before retiring we managed to win A$100 in the hotels slot machine room - another hangover from the mining days.

Ballarat:

Main street Ballarat

The Gold Exchange

Sovereign Hill:

Panning for gold!- none left!

A fracas outside the Theatre.........

In Sovereign Hill we went down the actual mine that was was worked there and got just a flavour of how difficult conditions must have been.The largest gold nugget ever found - named The Welcome Stranger - was found here by two Cornish miners in 1869 - it weighed 2283 oz and measured 12" x 24".....they never worked again! Then it was back to Melbourne - through very English looking landscapes - before leaving for Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast

The Great Ocean Road

13th-15th December 2011

We met up with Eileen and Herb in Melbourne (the folks who will be using our motorhome in July next year). They very kindly invited us to a freind's "barbie" where we swapped motorhome and Blighty stories. As part of our motorhome swap with them they suggested we use their car for a week so that we could explore outside the city and we decided to travel along the Great Ocean Road. We left Melbourne and headed for the Twelve Apostles near Peterborough, a 500km round trip, passing towns such as Torquay and Hastings along the route. We spent two nights at Apollo Bay (where we called into to see our freind's son Robin (who runs a very nice cafe there) and walked part of the Great Ocean Walk - where we spotted Koalas in the wild.

The start of the Great Ocean Road

Koalas sleep for up to 19 hours per day!

and walked to a wonderful waterfall................

We reached the Twelve Apostles - although there's only about 9 still standing - but the rock formations all the way to Peterborough were amazing. As they are limestone strcutures all of them are slowly falling into the water.....In Peterborough (est.pop c.150......) we stayed through Air BnB with Steve and Kelly - Steve was a helicopter pilot doing trips on the Apostles. They made us welcome and directed us to the only place to eat - the local motel/pub - which looked a bit strange but the food, beer and welcome was typical Aussie - very good.

Monday, 19 December 2011

Melbourne

5th - 12th Dec 2011

Well we got away just as it started to get really cold and the first snows had fallen in Scotland. It was extremely quiet and very civilised at terminal 5……………………pity because our flight went from terminal 3 as we found out when we tried to check in!! “Who told you it went from here?” said the good-looking British Airways bloke that I asked………………..that would be my husband who used to work for British Airways!! Luckily it was only one stop on the Heathrow Express and no harm done.

It was a very nice 22 hour flight in Business Class with a brief stop to clean the plane and refuel. Unfortunately the flights to Melbourne from Sydney had been severely disrupted due to storms in Perth the previous day so we landed at Sydney at 6am and didn’t get out to Melbourne until 6 hours later but it was only a 1 hour flight and we were settled into our apartment by 4pm – minus our luggage though which wasn’t on the same flight! That arrived almost 36 hours late!

We stayed in a very posh apartment in one of Melbourne's suburbs which we booked through Airbnb. Mia who owned the apartment was lovely and met us when we arrived and then left us to make ourselves at home in her flat.

Malc in the foyer of our Melbourne apartment

Melbourne is a lovely city, very easy to get around with trams and trains, and so many different places to visit. We had a trip down the river on our first day and spent some time walking along the river Yarra.