Due to overwhelming popular demand (well, Eoin and Adam) here is our latest blog entry. We left you at the west side of the Nullarbor. Suffice to say we crossed it safely second time around and passed uneventfully through Ceduna (again), Port Pirie and Murray Bridge. The only highlight of this part of the trip was the Umpherston Sinkhole in Mount Gambier. The ground collapsed into this underground cave some time ago, nobody is sure when, and it was turned into a subteranian garden in 1886. Originally it enclosed a lagoon but even now, in its dry state, it is fairly impressive. It was the last thing we saw in South Australia.

The landscape changes almost immediately as you cross the border with Victoria. It feels a bit like you’ve just entered The Shire or the hilly green landscape of Piedmont in north Italy. Soon we hit our first Victorian town – Port Fairy.  Like a lot of Australian town names they pronounce it incorrectly. They call it “Port Ferry“. Other examples of the Aussie’s odd pronunciation include the Melbourne border town of Geelong and the Sydney beach town of Coogee – both pronounced without the first double-vowel (Gelong and Cogee). Quite why the Australians like to throw redundant double vowels about like this we haven’t figured out yet. Port Fairy was the first place to remind us of home. This was partly due to the cosy country pubs serving good Guinness, partly due to the rich green fields filled with cows, but mostly due to the fact that it was cloudy and raining. We ate, drank, and were merry.

From Port Fairy we approached the Great Ocean Road – one of the most spectacular drives in the world, and in the top three “things to do in Oz” for most backpackers. Built as a living monument to the Victorians who died in the First World War (what a brilliant idea), it features dramatic orange-grey cliffs rolling down off the landscape into violent blue sea with intriguing rock formations along the way. The road winds haphazardly around the cliffs as you travel east. It’s spectacular. The highlight for most is the Twelve Apostles – a series of stand-alone formations that cluster together off the coast. The destructive sea has reduced them by half in number, but they still attract huge crowds. Our favourite part of the road, however, was The Grotto. This is another sinkhole that has been carved out by the ocean to form a zen-like cave. The most impressive thing about it however was not the grotto itself, but the churning white sea outside it, possibly the most animated we’ve ever seen water be. We stood and watched the waves crash against the cave rocks for fifteen minutes. (Comments about some of the Great Ocean Road formations are included with the photographs rather than here, click on them below to read).

 We also came by something I thought didn’t exist in Australia – a whiskey distillery. The Timboon Distillery are new kids on the block, with one three year old single malt on offer at $100 a bottle. They need time to let it age a little, watch this space. After a wee taste we wished them luck and moved on.

Our last stop before Melbourne was Kennett River – only a name on the map really, but a good destination for wildlife spotting. We managed to catch sight of several wild koalas creeping around the trees in and around the caravan park as well as bright red parrots and fat pleased-looking kookaburras while we put together our Melbourne plans on the laptop.

In the evening we drove north from Kennett River deep into the forest to check out the Glow Worm Walk. This was mentioned in the Lonely Planet but it took a bit of local research to find it as nothing was signposted. We stopped at a small clearing in the park near where the glow worms were meant to be and waited for nightfall. Heating some soup on our camping stove, we discussed how lucky we’d been with the car when night duly fell and it was time to go looking for glow worms. We didn’t have far to go. A quick walk back along the trail we’d driven unveiled what looked like a dimly lit night sky in the bushes. It was interesting but, if we’re honest, a bit disappointing. We stumbled back to the car in the pitch black, sat down and Marie turned the key. The engine made a chugging noise and failed to start. She tried again, and again. Now was possibly a good time to make use of that AA membership. I fumbled in the dark for my phone and turned it on- no signal. We were buried 10km deep into the forest at night time with a broken car and no way to contact anybody. It is fair to say that at this point we began to get worried.

Marie tried the key again. Chug-chug-silence. This was similar to what had happened to us in Norseman in the last blog entry when the mechanic came and the car miraculously started again. He told us that we had nothing to worry about. We cursed him and tried the key again. At this stage we were outlining our options. It’s mad how panicky your thoughts get. We had enough tins of soup to do us a couple of days if needs be. We had a solid supply of torch batteries and whiskey in the boot. It was a long walk back down the hill in the dark. Having prepared our minds for the possibility of staying overnight in the car, we tried the key again to no avail. “Right”, I remember saying, “unlock the bonnet.” I thought maybe standing there with my head in the bonnet looking like I knew what I was doing might help us. I did the only things I know how to do with an engine. I checked the water level – which was fine. Then I checked the oil which was, gasp, almost empty. We’d checked the oil in the engine every few days initially, and it was always at the same level. The last time we checked it was in Norseman and it was fine then. Why, all of a sudden, was there no oil? Why, come to think of it, had we not bloody checked it since we left Norseman?

Thankfully we had a spare bottle of oil in the boot which was left over from replacing the engine. Marie held the torch while I emptied the whole lot into the bowels of the car. Fingers crossed, we turned the key again and – the engine started. “Drive! Drive!” I shouted and Marie wasted no time getting us the hell out of there.

Things got better after the glow-worm catastrophe. The next morning at a local café, I was introduced to the wonders of tomato and avocado salad for breakfast. We motored on into Melbourne to finish a 5-week 7,000km road trip that was, as you have been reading, well worth the petrol money. We immediately set about finding accommodation and jobs. We also stopped taking pictures. This wasn’t a concious decision – it just kind of happened, and it’s a pity really because Melbourne is a brilliant city and we’d love to include some photos of it here.

Melbourne is, everyone will tell you, Australia’s European city. Aside from the trams and the wholly Italian Lygon street, we’re not sure why people tell you this because it isn’t really. What Melbourne is though is a city of alleyways. The main streets are slick and clean, the architecture an impressive mix of relatively old and ambitiously new, but it is down the many hidden streets where Melbourne comes into its own. Here you will find secretive pubs, candle-lit restaurants and cheese shops – all looking quaint and a bit fictional. This gives it a charm that was missing in Adelaide and Perth. Politically, the city is the most liberal in Australia, at least judging by the excellent Melbourne broadsheet newspaper The Age. It’s a pity this isn’t in national circulation because it contains far more sensible thinking (in our opinion) than most of the other Australian media we’ve seen.

After several days of searching for a place to stay, we found a room in a house about an hours walk from the city centre for an unbelievable price and grabbed it. Finding temporary work took longer. Because we were only in the city for a few weeks, we couldn’t yet pursue “proper” long-term jobs. We applied for dozens of jobs online and didn’t receive one phone call or email. Things were getting desperate and we were down to our last $400 when I finally landed a job working in a warehouse. It beats picking fruit in mid-40 degree heat at least.

The only problem in work is that I find it very difficult to understand the Aussies, especially when they talk quietly. This is because of both pronunciation and vocabulary. It goes both ways, and happens to Marie also. If you walk up to someone and ask for a brush to sweep the floor, they look at you as if you’re stupid until they realise you’re talking about a broom. Marie’s been unable to convey the message when ordering a burger that she wants it without salad. We have to order it “without lettuce, tomatoes or onions, but with the sauce and cheese please.” I find myself in work saying yes to sentences that sound to me like “blah blah blah blah backpacker blah.” Come to think of it, it’s not just the Aussies. I’ve terrible trouble trying to understand the Cork guy who lives in our house too.

So that’s that for now, we’ll labour away for a few more weeks to build up the finances and the next blog entry should be from Hong Kong on the way back to Dublin.x