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Dory was due for her 5000km oil change, so we decided to check her into the garage at Port Campbell. Afterwards, we headed off on some more of the Great Ocean Road and snapped some shots of The Arch, London Bridge and the Bay of Islands.

We continued on to a place called Wannon near the Grampians where the book said there was free camping. The camping spot was really nice. It made a change from the rip off national parks in NSW where they charge $27 for camping and supply no facilities except a hole in the ground toilet. It’s a rip off especially when you can stay in NSW camping grounds for only $20 and they supply hot showers, flush loos and free wireless Internet.

We slept in Dory again as it is a pain doing the tent thing just for one night. Putting up the tent is fine, as it is done while drinking beer. It’s taking it down the next morning that is a pain. It takes a lot longer as we have to also clean the tent, and sometimes wait for it to dry.

We have a new camp set-up for car sleeping (thanks to Kathmandu sale in Melbourne). It’s a special car shade, which we tried doing with tarps but is a pain. This one works really well and it only cost $35 including poles, guy ropes and tent pegs.

Anyway, we cooked a nice beef and vegetable stir fry for dinner, accompanied by a few beers, followed by a peaceful night sleep.

We departed the heat of Melbourne and as we were driving along the great ocean road I said to Mike “Look, there’s a kangaroo up that tree”. Mike replied, “I didn’t think they could climb trees”. Still half asleep and not realising what I had said and not really understanding the randomness of Mikes reply, we stopped to have a look.

“They’re not kangaroos, they’re Koalas!” exclaimed Mike. There were four koalas sleeping up in their trees. This was a bit of a bonus as it’s quite rare to see Koalas in the wild.

The great ocean road was great. It was bloody freezing though. We had just left 40 degrees in Melbourne and here it was only 15 degrees. It was like going from summer to winter in just a couple of hours.

We camped at Port Campbell for the night and had to go out for dinner due to a total fire ban. These total fire bans are sending us broke!

We decided to stay on another day in Melbourne to recover from the grand prix. It’s still really hot, about 40 degrees. Kathmandu had another sale, so we departed the store; arms loaded with yet more stuff. We really need to get out of this town before we spend any more money.

So much for recovering. I didn’t have the afternoon nap I promised myself, and ended up gambling at the casino until 2am. As it was St Paddy’s day I decided to gamble with the green chips ($25 ones) and ended up losing a load of money. It’s definitely time to leave this town!

As Mike and I were walking to the grand prix we had a little discussion.

Jo: Do you know any of the drivers in the Grand Prix?
Mike: Nope, you?
Jo: no idea.
(pause)
Jo: Tell me, why are we going to the grand prix?
Mike: For the Kiss concert wasn’t it?
Jo: oh yeah
(pause)
Jo: Do you know any Kiss songs?
Mike: nope, you?
Jo: I don’t think so.

Great, $300 spent and we don’t know a thing about what we’re about to see.

Anyway, off we trotted to the Melbourne Grand Prix. We got there early (around 10am) and marked our spot at the front on the track. It was a stinking hot day of 38 degrees and no shade. V8 super cars were very cool, followed by FA-18 jet fighter display, then a Qantas 747 flyover, then the F1 cars. They were fast, noisy and exciting. Excellent stuff.

After the race we trotted off to the Kiss concert. We had paid $50 each to see Kiss but it turned out it was free to all Grand Prix goers. The $50 was to get into a special area close to the stage. Oh well, suited us as we like to be up close anyway.

The Kiss concert was an amazing show. There was on-stage pyrotechnics. You could feel the heat from the flames on stage. Lucky there was no fire ban in force. Or was there?

A scary Kiss band member maimed himself then flew to the rafters of the stage. The main singer flew across the crowd on a flying fox type thing so the people outside of the inner circle could see him. Various parts of the stage lifted band members to the rafters. There were on-stage fireworks. It was all very theatrical.

And they sung two songs I knew!

On the walk back to the hotel we were discussing the days events.

Jo: Do you know who won the Grand Prix today?
Mike: Schumacher wasn’t it?

Oh well, at least we enjoyed it.

Here are some photos of the day.

Here are some photos of surf school. Some thumbnails are missing but most of the images are there

Surf School

Heres the proof we did the scary superman ride:

We awoke to another stinking hot day. It was 32 degrees at 8am! As we had camped under no trees, we had to make do with sitting in the shade of Dory for our breakfast. We decided it was too hot and windy to do anything today so we went for a drive in the comfort of Dory and her air conditioning.

When we got back to camp it was still stinking hot so we decided to head for the air-conditioned pub, where we sat and drank coronas. When we left the pub, the cool change had come through and it was about 20 degrees cooler. It was a welcomed relief. There is also a total fire ban so we couldn’t cook our dinner so we had pizza.

We got back to camp where squealing Melbournian weekenders now surrounded us. After a few latecomers setting up camp in the dark and shining torches in our tent, it all went quiet and had a reasonable nights sleep.

I decided I wasn’t going to sleep under the possum’s toilet again, so we packed up and headed further north to Inverloch. We found a quiet camping ground on the foreshore with basic facilities. We felt like we had the place to ourselves, it was lovely.

We carefully placed the tent away from all trees, and put the tarp overtop in case there happened to be any projectile pooing possums here. It was about 40 degrees and damn hot.

I thought we would have a lovely sleep as it is such a quiet spot, but this was not to be. In the night a furnace hot wind picked up and the tarp started flapping with extreme noise. I made Mike get up and help me take it down. The tent was also flapping big time so we put out the guy ropes. Anyway to cut a long night short, I had no sleep again due to flappage all night long.

We spent the morning moving the tent out from under the trees and putting a giant tarp over the top.

We were both very tired due to lack of sleep so just had a quiet day blobbing by the pool.

In the evening I decided to get drunk so I would sleep soundly and not be bothered with possum noises. However this lasted for about 2 hours when I awoke with a splitting headache. And the possum still managed to projectile his poo onto our tarp. At least it was on the tarp and not the tent.

After a leisurely start and breakfast on the South Bank in Melbourne, we headed off to Phillip Island for some penguin spotting.

Our first night in Phillip Island we camped under a possum’s toilet. The night went something like this:

Jo: That possum just pissed on the tent!
5 sec later
Jo: That possum just shat on the tent! Dirty effing animal
This carried on for a few hours until 2.30am
Jo: Its too noisy, I’m gonna sleep in the car
Tent: zip, zip, zip, zip
Dory: click (remote control), door open, door slam
5 sec later
Dory: door open, door slam, click
Tent: zip, zip, zip, zip
Jo: It smells like Melon in there (and crawls back into sleeping bag)
10 minutes of more possum pooing and peeing
Jo: That’s it, I’m not putting up with this any longer, I’m going to sleep in the car and you’re coming with me
Mike: (rolls over and goes back to sleep)
Tent: zip, zip, zip, zip
Dory: click, door open, door slam, door open, door slam
Thump, thump, rustle, rustle
Dory: door open, door slam, door open, door slam
Tent: zip, zip, zip, zip
Jo: Ok, Dory is ready for sleeping in.
Mike: (gathers his sleeping bag and pillow and staggers to the car still asleep)
Tent: zip, zip, zip, zip
Dory: door open, door slam
Jo: should I open a window?
Mike: No, creepy crawlies will get in
Jo: What if the gas bottle leaks
Mike: It won’t leak
Jo: Can you unlock the car? I’m worried the remote control will fail and we’ll be trapped in here.
Mike: whatever
Dory: Click
Mike and Jo: snore

It was delightfully quiet in Dory and we both slept in until 10am.