Melbourne - Adelaide - Perth (9309km explored with car)

Great Ocean Road

We left Melbourne behind us and headed west along the coast. Our first destination the Great Ocean Road! The Great Ocean Road is a 243 km stretch of road between Melbourne and Adelaide running along the coast. It is considered one of the most beautiful roads to drive in Australia. The road winds up and down along the cliffs overlooking the ocean and nestled in between are small towns. We decided to have lunch in Apollo Bay one of the bigger villages along the way.

We wanted to visit the most southern lighthouse along the Great Ocean Road, but of course you had to pay a fortune to even look at it. However on the way back from the lighthouse we discovered a bunch of wild koalas in the trees. We stopped and realized there were koalas everywhere. We got a lot of nice pictures and the detour turned out to be worth it after all :). There also happened to be a dead snake in the road right where we stopped which we first thought was alive. When we left, there was six other cars that had stopped to look at the koalas and the snake.

The next stop was the 12 apostles, the most famous tourist attraction on the Great Ocean Road. They are a series of stones sticking up from the ocean. Actually they are the rest of the coast, but the water has washed the coast away and pushed it back and the apostles is all that is left of where the old coastline was. We arrived in the afternoon and snapped some amazing photos with the sun low in the sky! We also checked out the Loch Ard Gorge located 10 minutes to the west. There was several fascinating stone formations and cliffs, all signs of the erosion in action. There was also a cave under the cliffs. All in all the Great Ocean Road is an amazing drive that everyone should do while visiting Australia. There is tons more to do as well that we simply didn't have time for.

After the Great Ocean Road we still had a lot of kilometers to cover before Adelaide. One of the places we stopped was a small town called Kingston SE. One of the attractions there was one of the big things, a big lobster. We took some pictures before looking for the free showers that were supposed to be in Kingston. While looking we ended up on the beach. And it turned out it was possible to do sand driving for free! So we cruised a little bit around before returning to our search. There wasn't much more to see in Kingston so we continued towards Adelaide the next morning.

Adelaide 

The road down to Adelaide is one of the most beautiful "entrances" to a city I have ever seen. The highway goes trough the Adelaide hills and at the bottom the landscape opens up and the city comes into view. Adelaide however is not the greatest city I have seen. In fact it looks more like a big village than a big city. There are virtually no tall buildings, just blocks and blocks of houses. Still, it has it's charm. I would say it has more of the old feel than any other big Australian city.

We spent our first day in Adelaide looking around. We went to the migration museum which turned out to be much more interesting than I imagined. They had a great exhibition about Southern Australia and how Adelaide was founded, and the impact of immigrants from Europe. They also had displays of immigrant life and how it was to settle down in a new country. After the museum we checked out the Botanical Gardens. They were beautiful.

The next day we had an appointment to get the car fixed. At some point on the road from Melbourne our blinkers died. I thought it would be expensive to fix, but it turned out it was a quick fix and it only cost us 75 dollars. It was while waiting for the car that I sat at McDonald's and posted my two previous blog posts :P

Barossa Valley

Surrounding Adelaide is several wine regions. The most famous being the Barossa Valley. We decided to make a day trip and see how it was. The first thing we checked out was the famous whispering wall. One of the first stone dams built in Australia and the world. Now it's famous for it's amazing acoustic ability. You can stand on one end and talk normally and the people 140 meters on the other end of the damn can hear you loud and clear.

After the whispering wall we visited Jacobs Creek winery, one of the biggest wineries in the Barossa Valley. We did some wine tasting and looked around before we headed further into the valley. On the outskirts and up one of the many hills was a lookout that we went too. There we had a great view of the valley with vineyards in every direction. There was also a collection of stone statues that we looked at.

The Nullabor Plain

The next day we headed west again towards Perth and for the first time we really left civilization. Ahead of us lay endless kilometers of highway trough the Nullabor Plains. The Nullabor Plain are often called the Nullabor desert as well, but for me it looked more like a tundra than desert. The name Nullabor means "no tree". There are a few trees but most of it is just covered with small bushes. One thing is true, it's very desolate. Every 200 kilometer is a small "town" with a gas station and a motel and not much more. It took us 3 full days of driving and 3 nights camping to cross Eyre Peninsula and the Nullabor. It was an interesting experience. One of the impressive things you see along the way is the massive road trains.

The first night we camped at a rest stop along the highway just east of Ceduna. We soon realized that the Eyre Peninsula and the Nullabor has 1 billion flies that are starving to death and annoy the living hell out of you. Within seconds I had 30 flies around my face, trying to go into my eyes, mouth, nose and ears. From that day we always ate in the towns to avoid the flies, and just put up the tent when we stopped for the night. Speaking of towns, in Kimba where we bought food, they had another big animal. It was a big parrot!

The second day we continued on from Ceduna which is regarded as the beginning of the Nullabor Plains. We took of the highway at Fowlers Bay to take a free shower. We had no idea when we would get the chance to shower again. Then we continued west along the Great Australian Bight. That afternoon we got to one of the famous lookouts along the road. A few places the highway is only a few hundred meters away from the cliffs and the ocean. It felt like we had arrived at the end of the world. Just endless plains, then suddenly steep cliffs right into the ocean, and then just ocean as far south as you can see. The place had it's own atmosphere. That night we camped about 50 km east of the WA border.

The next day we crossed into WA and the food checkpoint. It's illegal to carry any fruits, vegetables, plants or honey across the boarder. At the border they had a big Kangaroo that I had to take a picture of :P We had breakfast in Eucla, the last real town before Norseman which is the end of the Nullabor. As you can see on the picture, even half way trough the Nullabor it was still 1435 km left to Perth. It was this day that we drove the longest straight stretch of road in Australia, 146.6km. It's basically 1 and a half hours of straight road. Driving straight might seem easy enough, but after 146km you welcome a turn in the road. It's also pretty damn boring when all you have to look at is a flat plain with bushes. That day we made it almost all the way to Norseman and camped at another rest stop just east of town.

We checked out Norseman the next morning and went to the local information center to get our certificates for successfully crossing the Nullabor. :) A small tourist thing you get for free. We had breakfast and took some pictures before heading south towards Esperance.

From Esperance we headed east to Lucky Bay, voted the whitest beach in Australia. We wanted to make a beach day but again we were unlucky with the weather, it was cloudy and cold. We still went for a quick swim. It was freezing! Right on the beach was a mother kangaroo feeding it's baby. It wasn't afraid and we got some really cute photos. Sadly we had to keep going the next day towards Perth.

Our last scenic stop before Perth was the Wave Rock. A large granite rock carved into a wave. The "wave" is 110 meters long, 15 meters high and truly something unique in the middle of the wilderness. I am always amazed at the weird things I find in this country. We did the obligatory "surfing" photos on the rock and looked around in amazement before continuing towards Perth. That night we wild camped 200 kilometers east of Perth between some trees off the road. And this is where this blog post ends as well. The next will be about Perth and some big changes.