Sunday 10th December – Picking up the minibus and leaving Adelaide

We had discussions about the logistics of getting a bus to the airport and having to come back to collect all our bags with the minibus, but this would be too far out of the way.  Ubers this morning were suddenly very expensive, so we ended up catching a local taxi to the airport for $25 with all of our belongings.

There we collected our 12-seater minibus from Europcar. This had none of the facilities we have grown accustomed to! Like a fridge for example, or any storage or a bathroom, but it is a much cheaper option for travel to Melbourne than any car hire options we have looked into.  I had joked when we first booked it that we should sell tickets to give people a lift down the Great Ocean Road, and now here we were!

It was a 20-minute drive to pick up our passengers for the next few days.  Sebastian and Natalia had been staying in an AirBNB too.  After our brief conversation as we left Britz the other day we had been in communication and agreed that a lift share would work well for all of us. We threw all their bags into the minibus and discussed the plan for the next few days.  They had more ideas for places they wanted to see than us, which was lucky as it gave us a focus for our initial direction of travel.  

Natalia modelling our new set of wheels...

We headed out of Adelaide South-East towards a place called Mount Gambier, basically choosing the coastal route whenever possible.  We stopped off for some sandwiches for lunch and a couple of viewpoints along the coast but we weren’t exactly blown away by the views today.

Pied guillemots

  

Looks like someone had a little too much fun on the sand...

As we went we discovered some important facts about our passengers - most importantly that they have a similar taste in music to us which is extremely lucky when you take into consideration how important the soundtrack is when you’re on a road trip!  Two of Natalia’s favourite bands ever are The Beatles and Pearl Jam, so I think we will be able to cope with the music over the next few days!  We shared the responsibility for tune selection with our guests and enjoyed a lot of rock as we drove along.

We made a brief detour to visit the Southend of Australia (right) and a massive lobster called Larry.

Larry is over 17 metres tall and 7 tonnes in weight!

Having taken the slower, coastal route all day we didn’t reach Mount Gambier until about 530pm.  We decided to try the local caravan parks for cheap accommodation.  The main reason we had agreed to stop here was to see the Blue Lake. The colour of this lake, formed from a volcanic crater, changes dramatically from grey to vivid blue each November an then gradually fades back to grey during winter, so we were visiting at just the RIGHT time of year (for once). However, the lake was not looking strikingly blue today in the cloud cover but hopefully this will change in the morning?

The Blue Lake

We headed to the nearest caravan park, which was lucky as they were closing in the next half an hour. We discussed options and they let us take a peek at a couple of cabins.  The issue was that to get a reasonably cheap option meant that the sleeping arrangements consisted of one double bed and two bunk beds! However, with the time getting late and other options potentially being more expensive, our new friends agreed that they would take the bunk beds tonight so that it cost $71 each couple for the cheaper cabin.  We agreed that, if the same issue happens tomorrow night obviously it would be our turn to squeeze into bunks, though whether Simon would fit waits to be seen!

Having secured our lodgings, we went to the Supermarket where we purchased pizzas for dinner and breakfast goods.  We then had a comical race to get to a bottle shop before they shut so that we could use a money-off coupon from our supermarket receipt...  It wasn’t until our third off-licence that we managed to arrive in time…. Stressful!

We somehow managed to cook the pizzas and garlic bread in the tiniest oven ever before enjoying a night of card playing and beer drinking with some rare extra company.