The Journey Part One

The Blue Beast in Kangaroo Valley

So I thought it was about time to fill in the gap between Sydney and Adelaide.

Let's start at the beginning...

We decided we needed to buy a car and take a long road trip, all along the coast(s), to Adelaide. We had planned on taking advantage of some backpackers by swooping in at the last minute and offering a super low price for their car that they MUST sell because they are leaving the country tomorrow... but that didn't happen. Long story short we ended up with an electric blue 1996 Ford Taurus. Automatic, unfortunately, and a real bitch on fuel in the city but freaking amazing on the highway (a full tank (60L) got us over 700km... didn't hurt that the road was flat and straight between Melbourne and Adelaide, haha).

Andy on the Sea Cliff Bridge between Sydney and Wollongong.


First night in our tent at Windang.

So we set off from Sydney on a Tuesday with our car and all our new camping stuff and headed south down the coast of New South Wales on the Grand Pacific Drive. We first stopped in Wollongong (about 85km from Sydney) for some sight seeing and information on Free Camping places... yeah, well there aren't many of those around anymore we quickly learned. The first night we stayed in Windang at a caravan park for $38! That was an unpowered site. Most places were all booked up since it was still school holidays for the kiddies and thats when we began to think that maybe this road trip wasn't the best idea just cuz the timing was bad really... we were counting down the days til Australia Day (Jan 26th) was over and places wouldn't be so busy and expensive. But in the meantime we found a free campsite via the internet and stayed there for two nights. It was in Kangaroo Valley, or near Kangaroo Valley, and the camp site was along a little river. A lot of people had set up camp there... even a few caravans with the works going on, like generators, tvs, everything (You could tell some people had been staying there quite a while).

The Bridge in Kangaroo Valley

Our first night there we were pleasantly surprised to discover the camp ground was a haven for wombats! There were well over a dozen just grazing at dusk. It was really cool! haha One was really close to our site and we of course conducted a full photoshoot with it. It just sat there and ate the whole time like it was totally used to the human attention. They were so cute. Since there wasn't any nearby lights or civilization really this was the night when we started going to bed shortly after it got dark (at like 9:30) and subsequently getting up around 8am...

WOMBAT!

The next morning was when our lovely car decided to be difficult. It wouldn't start.

To Be Continued...!

Winter Olympics

On Saturday morning we woke up earlier-ish, like 8:30am, hoping to catch some of the Opening Ceremonies but one of our roommates was watching something else. Oh well. Later I heard about the luger who died and thought "Oh great, is this going to be known as the Death Games now??"
Much to my delight I found out later they were playing it again in primetime! So I watched the full thing, start to finish, well almost. I left the room for most of the singing. Anyways, here are my comments:
Cool set-up at BC place, with the projection on the floor and shit
USA had bad hats
Ugh to Nelly Furtado and Brian Adams, and Sarah Mchoweveryousayandspellit.
I liked the slam poet guy, but not his neck beard
Ashley McIsaac is still around?!
That opera singer near the end was scary
YES! Wayne Gretzky! YES!

Luckily the British (and French Canadian hating) boyfriend went to bed and didn't watch with me, otherwise I would've been answering stupid questions all night, haha.
I was a little scared of what the Australian commentators and coverage would be like, but so far so good. For the Ceremonies they hardly spoke and just read the script and they're showing live stuff pretty much all day. AND Grant Hackett is there as a correspondent!

Almost one month later...

Giant Koala in middle of nowhere Victoria... enroute to Adelaide

Sorry for my recent absence from blogging. A lot has happened since I posted last but I'm just going to sum up the last week or two.

We ended up driving from Merimbula, NSW (Far South New South Wales) all the way to Adelaide over the course of three days. It wasn't bad and we encountered few problems. One of our problems was not knowing the way through Melbourne and having to pay $12.55 in tolls. Boooooo. Our car was surprisingly, no, shockingly good on highway gas milage... like 700km+ for her full, just under 60L tank.

The Blue Beast Herself

Anyways, we did that part of the 'road trip' that fast because we were looking for work in Merimbula and Andy had this long list of electical companies to call and decided to practice by first calling some companies in Adelaide that we'd looked up online. Well on his second practice call he was offered an interview on Monday morning (this was Thursday morning) and the call had given him such a positive vibe that we decided to go for it.

Long story short he got the job no problem, even after a few hectic and last minute I-need-some-references calls to England. He started yesterday and said it is eaaaaaaaaaaaaasy. But hot because they're doing new houses that already have the windows installed and it's about 40C here everyday. In the one week we had to kill we looked for a place to live (we were staying at a caravan park, north of the city, in a tent). It was a royal pain in the ass but we finally found a share house with a nice Aussie couple in a good location and across the street from Ikea :)

So we have a home. Andy has a job. I'm looking for a job. And it's summer. Now if only our car would cooperate....

Previous Home Sweet Home

On Sunday evening, after we'd finally moved into this house, we realized we'd left grocery shopping too late. So we drove around trying to find an open supermarket (the vast majority of them close at 5pm on Sundays). We ended up getting pizza. When we went to drive away from the pizza place the car wouldn't start- flat battery! We got a jump and went for a drive, hoping that's charge her up a bit. Nope. Stopped for gas, flat again. Gas station didn't have jumper cables, attendent told us to walk a few blocks to a different to buy them. $40 later we got her started. By this point we were hot and tired and both sort of knew it wasn't going to start in the morning but felt too stressed/defeated/what have you to do anything about it (opening a phonebook would've been a good move in hindsight... ie multiple 24 hour car battery delivery service). In the morning we got up early enough to have it not start, call a cab, and Andy still be on time for his first day. I waited around for our housemates to set off for work, got a jump, and took the blue beast to the garage... I assisted the mechanic in holding the hood open (it doesn't stay open itself) while he tested the battery... the tester read "REPLACE -100%" Sweet. Since then the car has been a good girl and can't wait to go.

So we thinks we're gonna take the next weeks to settle in, I'm gonna look for and get a job, and just enjoy everything this city has to offer.