So after a day long ride in a Greyhound Bus, we arrived in Coober Pedy (opal capital of the world) which is mostly underground! We spent the night sleeping 6.5 metres where the temperature is 24-26C year round, even when the temperature outside is 54C (in the shade, aka FREAKIN HOT!)
Since we arrived at 8pm, we went straight to bed & then went exploring in the morning, before touring the opal mines & surrounding areas in the afternoon. Sara found some opals in the ground around one of the mining holes & was allowed to keep it - how cool is that? At 8.50pm our next Greyhound bus left Coober Pedy & headed over night for 12 hours to Adelaide.
The bus was rather cold & there weren't many people on it so we were excited to stretch out until the driver told us we could only take up 2 seats for safely reasons :-(
We arrived in Adelaide around 7.45am and walked to our hotel, where I got shoved in a holding area as the room would not be ready till noon. Sara went out to get some breakfast & check out the city. Apparently she was NOT impressed, she found it quite & boring.
In the afternoon after checking in & having a shower, Sara was off to Hahndorf, a German city about 25km away from Adelaide. It was an interesting little town, but she was so knackered from the overnight bus, she slept the whole way out to the town & walked around in a sleepy daze (lol)
The following day Sara picked up the car from Avis & off they went Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road bound. The first day was about 570km drive to Mount Gambier, with nothing much to speak of along the way, but stopping every 2 hours for toilet/stretch your leg breaks. The one thing we did learn in Mt Gambier is that when we were arriving in Melbourne, the Grand Prix along with a flower show and food & wine show were all going to be going on, so we were going to have a hard time finding a place to stay which wasn't super expensive . . . luckily thanks to Tania (girl I'd met in Africa) who lives in Melbourne, she gave us a few ideas & we were able to find a place that was reasonable, NOT the InterContinetnal for AUS$650/night!!!
Spent the night in Mt Gambier and left the next morning stopping at all the "sights" on the Great Ocean Road and staying the night at the 12 Apostles Motor Inn & Conference Centre.
The next morning we drove from 12 Apostles to Geelong, again stopping for photos at all the important places.
After a night in Geelong we drove up to Ballarat to see Soveign Hill & try our hand at panning for gold, which we soon learned was a lot harder than opal mining & we ended up with nothing to show :-( and then drove into Melbourne, but missed our drop off time of 6pm by about an hour due to city traffic.
Next morning we woke up, returned the car & saw that Cats was playing so we stopped in for a quick avaiability check, and walked out with 7th row centre stage tickets (SCORE!!!!!) But then realised we needed to do a bit of shopping as none of us had anything aside from shorts, trainers & flip flops, so the rest of the day was spent shopping at the DFO (direct factory outlet) where we all found something to wear for this evening's performance!!
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