Coober Pedy, Adelaide & The Great Ocean Road & Melbourne

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!!

Alice Springs & surrounding area

Well we've been busy here in Australia, as you can tell from Sara's last update.  Since then, I've been packed, unpacked, repacked & HAD tons of clean laundry - gotta love fresh smelling clothes!

We left for the airport at 6am a week ago (Thursday) and got the 9.30am flight (aka the 10.50am due to high winds & heavy rains) and after a bumpy take off the rest of the flight was pretty smooth, apparently up in economy they showed the movie The Blind Side, down in the belly of the plane they showed nothing, what's up with that?

We arrived safely into Alice Springs, got a taxi to the Heavitree Gap Outback Lodge and planned our next 4 days.  That night Sara fed the local rock wallabees which come down the gap around dinner time to get fed pellets sold by the hotel.  The next day was the West MacDonnell range tour - so we saw, Simpson's Gap, Ormiston Gorge, Standley Chasm, Glen Helen Gap, and a few others I've forgotten now.

Following day was the beginning of the bigger adventure, a 2 day tour of Ayer's Rock, The Olgas & Kings Canyon. 2.5 hours after leaving Alice, we arrived at Erldunda (which is just a road house) and switched into a smaller van for the day in Kings Canyon, the weather was looking cloudy but not horrible . . . until another 3 hour drive got us to Kings Canyon Station (cattle station - only petrol shop for miles!) and they announced the creek might be flooded, but we decided to have a look . . . to make a long story short, we made it into Kings Canyon creek to find it flooded 1metre above the road & by the time we turned around Katherine's creek was flooded 1 metre as well, so we were trapped between the two creeks for 1.5 hours, till Katherine's creek went down a bit & we just gunned it & made it across.  The plan for the day totally impossible, we headed back to Erldunda for the night.  Next day we headed to The Olgas & Ayer's Rock, which we saw in the pouring rain, which is very unusual AND we got to see awesomely amazing waterfalls coming off the rock, which few people get to see in person :-)  Due to the tour failing the day before we decided to stay an extra night in Erldunda & go to Kings Canyon the next day . . . long story short, it had rained too much & now the creek was 2 metres high, so we came back to Alice Springs & saw some things in town.  Spent the night at Heavitree Gap Lodge & next morning got the Greyhound bus to Coober Pedy.

Arrived in Coober Pedy, found our underground motel & slept 6.5 metres below the ground - WEIRD!  Then took a tour of the booming metropolis of Coober Pedy, getting to do a bit of opal mining ourselves, well not really, we got to look for opals in already dug up piles of rock, & I found a few pieces :-)

Last night we got on the overnight bus from Coober Pedy down to Adeliade, where we arrived this morning at 7.30am & have been walking around till now.