12 Apostles

Another day , another coffee and another 20 minute walk to the part of Melbourne we should have stayed in . It is a continuous reminder how we chose the wrong place to stay and even the savviest of travellers make wrong decisions sometimes .... and I make them all the time and that why I write this blog . It’s kind of a manual on what not to do for the most part hahaha ! This morning we made one good decision though when Kathleen booked our tour with a company called Hit The Road Tours . Most of these tours will be on big buses with a million tourists and will go all in the same direction and will definitely turn you off of seeing all the beauties of the world . Hit The Road does a reverse 12 Apostles tour which means we take the shortcut all the way out there and do everything in reverse and we are promised to avoid the crowds and see more then the other tours will show us . I highly suggest this tour   . 

We hiked the 20 minute walk with coffee in hand and had to wake up at 5 am to make this all happen as we had to be at the meeting point by 7 am and showering before a 12 hour tour is definitely a must . Don’t show up all stinky for anything like this , if you do then you will disappoint yourself with your lack of hygiene and no I’m not some hygiene freak or maybe I am , regardless who cares 🤪. We arrived a bit early as I usually do for everything I do as I like to be on time unlike some people I know (Takacs I’m looking at you ) and then some others arrived and more and more people arrived and we were a bit skeptical for a moment thinking how many people are on this small bus and how uncomfortable will it be ? Then our tour guide Guy showed up ... when he said his name was Guy I thought oh no some French dude is gonna rip on us English speakers all day lol 😝 turns out he is Brazilian and is as bubbly as one can be and he clearly glows from his love of his job . He wrangles us onto his van which is very comfortable and introduces himself and we are off on our drive to avoid the crowds . This drive is a short cut and not on The Great Ocean Road but on the way back we will come across that road . We stopped in a small town for a rest stop and grabbed a coffee and stretched our legs while using the public toilets and then hit the road again with our next stop being at the 12 Apostles which as you see above is very breathtaking and if you are wondering there aren’t 12 pillars but actually 8 . There used to be 9 but one collapsed recently as nature has worked its way to build and destroy these pillars and nobody is allowed to go on or near these pillars . The beach below is not accessible and I’m sure it is monitored ... unfortunately everything is not monitored and some of the tourists visiting tend to leave their garbage which is not cool at all ! There are no bins there but if you carry your own garbage with you there I’m sure you can carry it back . Plastic bottles and pop cans litter the sides of the path and that for me is a turnoff and a reason why tourism in general is not always a good thing and I am sure that this is the reason that people are not allowed on the beach because I’m sure some idiots would chip pieces away from the pillars to take home as mementos . We as humans can be a destructive bunch 😢 . On a happy note when we arrived as promised there were no lineups of tourists and it was quite pleasant to have all the time in the world to take pictures and breath in all this amazing nature. 

I posted the pic above just for Petri who is a crazy dude I work for back home who has an infatuation with asking me if I’ve seen snakes 🐍 and to this day I have yet to see one slithering across my path and I definitely did have my eyes peeled to spot one aha ! We climbed back onto the bus and at this point the group started to blend a bit and we all started talking a bit more . Amongst our group was 2 Norwegian women , 2 Finnish women , an older couple from Newcastle (Geordies) and a family of three from Surrey ( England) and they are travelling for two years non stop and have already been everywhere you can imagine and their trip makes my 6.5 week trip so small . Wish I could do all that ! Maybe someday if I win the lottery 😝 . Next stop was the London Arch . Now I have no clue why they call it the London Arch as it’s nowhere near London but it was another beautiful stop on the Great Ocean Road . The arch fell apart also a few years ago and before you could actually walk across it and when it did collapse nobody was on the arch itself but there were two tourists out at the other edge who had to be rescued and all is fine . Guy made a good story out of it and there seems to be a happy ending to all of his stories ... not the happy ending you’re thinking of ! Get your mind out of the gutter 🤨 

There were a few more stops along the way with a few other good stories but I’m gonna leave them for you to experience when you come here . We were having fun taking silly pictures all day and then we started the portion of the trip where we got to see some wildlife on this beautiful and very comfortable day out . Yes it’s a long tour but the group we were with were all in good spirits and Guy made sure we were all happy and comfortable all day long and the weather was perfect and our luck was amazing also . First thing I saw was some crazy spider 🕷 on this beach we visited which is apparently dangerous and nobody was sure of what type it was but it sure as heck looked mean ! Then we went to see koalas 🐨 and found a bunch sleeping in trees .... they sleep 20 hours a day and aren’t the most active animals around . On the way there we encountered some wild cockatoos and parrots that flew onto people and I’m sure that becuase they are used to being fed which isn’t great but still made for some fun encounters . When we left the koalas just around the corner there was a Wallaby on the side of the road and we carried on our drive to see a golf course littered with Kangaroos 🦘 which were a bit bigger then the ones we saw in Caversham but not quite the big reds we are hoping to see . As I mentioned earlier , we were promised to avoid the crowds and we definitely did ! I highly suggest booking this tour . After a bit of a nap on the way back we planned out our next thing to do as we arrived at around 7 pm and the night market was open . 

We took a tram which is absolutely free in the city center to make up for time as the Queen Victoria Market is nowhere near our hotel also 😬 it started to rain on our way to the hotel and the fact that Melbourne can have four seasons in one day came to fruition and if you ever visit people will tell you this . The weather here is very unpredictable ! The Queen Victoria night market is another must see and if it happened more regularly we would probably go there every night as it has everything there with amazing food vendors , alcohol and shopping all in one area . We sampled chicken skewers and then Kathleen grabbed some jerk chicken and I went to another stall and grabbed some beef ribs and we got stuffed !!!!! Probably ate too much but as they say ... when in Rome ? We grabbed some sangrias after from a Spanish stall and then did some shopping for gifts and then ended our visit with some gelato which I probably shouldn’t have ate as I was already about to burst . We brought our rain ponchos we got on New Years Eve in Sydney with us and they came in handy as we decided to walk the 20 minute walk back to our hotel to try burning some calories . The city was lit up with thunder and lightning and was quite nice as we kept dry in our rain gear . When we got close to the hotel it became really muggy out and thankfully we have a/c in our room becaus it was time to crash . 

If you’re wondering about hockey ... nobody has stepped up to organize any ice time for me here and it’s time to take things into my own hands and jump onto a shinny skate at the closest rink which is the O’Brien Group Arena  . I wrote to them and they responded and there was no mention of this insurance that everyone here keeps mentioning to me and refuse to let me join in because I won’t pay $160 to have the associations insurance since I already have my own . It’s an absolute scam and the people here in the hockey community have done nothing aside from disappoint me . This is the only stop on my trip where nobody has stepped up and organized anything at all for me . That being all said I’m happy I do get to jump on the ice in a couple days to stretch out before the tournament in Adelaide next week . Thanks for nothing Melbourne hockey community .