April 17 – 19 – Back to the real
world
We picked up Monique and Ingo from the
airport and our two weeks of alone time was over. They had a pretty
good trip in Tahiti but had a few bumps along the way with stuff
breaking. Their return was timed very well though because we started
work training this week too. Training was painfully boring and also
not all that informative. We are going to be working at an inbound
customer service center for a program called Flybuys. Which is a
shopping rewards program through a grocery store. Training just
reminded me how much working sucked.
April 20 – To Apollo Bay
Today we were supposed to have a short
day of training. As usual things did not go according to plan. The
trains were running a little late in the morning so we didn't arrive
as early as we'd hoped. The day was pretty useless though we spent some
time waiting for our computers to get unlocked. Then we did some
silly training and we sat around some more. We eventually got signed into a
training version of the program we were doing but the rest of the
systems were down so we couldn't really see too much. We had been
promised a pizza lunch but as 1:15 rolled around we had to boot it
out of there since we had to catch a train to Apollo Bay at 2pm. We
went to the train station and bough our tickets and then asked them
to best way to get to Southern Cross station to catch our V-Line
Train, assuming these people would know best. The sent us up to one
station, North Melbourne, to come back down to Southern Cross. We
got off our train in Southern Cross and booked it to where we thought
our train would be, the platform was not printed on the ticket. We
arrived at our platform as the train was pulling away. It was so
frustrating. We had to wait 40min for the next train and would miss
our connecting bus to Apollo Bay. We weren't going to get to Apollo
Bay till about 8pm now. When our train did arrive it's first stop
was at North Melbourne! I don't understand why the stupid woman that
sold us the ticket couldn't have told us that!! (We also could have
walked faster that the train took). The stupid woman also sold us a
ticket for the next day and the ticket guy gave us a hard time about
it too. Not impressed with my day. We had about 2 hours to kill in
Geelong before we were able to catch our bus. We arrived in Apollo
Bay around 8pm and called the mechanic. He picked us up in Dotti and
then we went back to the shop to get the payment sorted out. It was
nice to have Dotti back! In Apollo Bay though there was a music
festival going on and the holiday parks were all at peak rates! We
were disgusted with a $50 campsite. We ended up parking in a
grassing parking area with a few other camper vans. The down side of
this was that we were parked next to other vehicles that drunk people
were sleeping in. We were woken up around 1am by the crazy chick in
the next vehicle banging on the windows of her partners car, yelling
at him over the phone and letting air out of his tires. It was not a
restful night.
April 21 – The Twelve Apostles and
Gibbons Steps
After our not so restful sleep we woke
up the an overcast grey day. It did not look like it was going to be
a promising day. We had some oatmeal and tea for breakfast and then
picked up a few groceries at the overpriced Apollo Bay IGA.
Fortunately by the time we headed out the skies had cleared and the
sun had come out. We started our drive and made it past Bimbi park
this time. Our first stop was a look out along the side of the road.
It gave a very nice view of the coast line. Our next stop was
Gibbons Steps, obviously this was a stair case but it lead down to
the beach. We got a pretty close look at one of the lime stone
formations but I don't think it was technically part of the Apostles.
We had a nice walk along the beach in the warm sand before heading
back up the car. We continued along to the Twelve Apostles. There
was a huge information center and parking lot. While parked we made
ourselves some lunch in the van. This was much easier to do than it
had been in the car. We then walked down to the Apostles viewing
platform. The view was amazing but the sun wasn't in the greatest
position for taking pictures. The place was also packed with Asian
tourists. We felt like a minority. I think I enjoyed the Gibbons
Steps more since there weren't many people on the beach and you could
get all kinds of different views. After the Apostles we headed to
the Loch Ard Gorge. This area was named after a ship named the Loch
Ard which crashed on the cliffs near by back in the late 1800s. The gorge
was very nice and there was a few different and gorgeous views to be
had. By this time we were feeling a little foot sore and had had
quite a bit of sun. We decided to call it a day for checking out the
coast. We had talked about going down to London Bridge but since the
bridge part collapsed in the 90's we figured it would be a similar
sight to the ones we had just seen. We decided to head up to Colac
to spend the night there. Once in the town we headed to the
information center and a very sweet and helpful lady gave us all
kinds of information about the area and things to see and do. We
decided to drive up to the Red Rock Scenic Reserve since it was still pretty nice
out. The scene at the top wasn't all that great and it was a
actually a little bit hazy. This area claims to be the youngest
volcano in Australia. We headed back down and checked into a motor
camp. Unfortunately we forgot our golden rule and didn't really
check it out too closely before paying for a night. Not quite sure
what we were thinking since the camp was right next to the highway.
They also only had an outdoor kitchen with no stove, fortunately the
BBQ had a burner on the side. We made ourselves a soup concoction
for dinner and then watched a movie called the Decendants. The movie
wasn't really what we expected, it was a bit of a tear jerker and a
drama. After the movie Beau had a bit of a headache so he went bed
while I read for a little bit.
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| Gibbons Steps |
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| The 12 Apostles |
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| Loch Ard Gorge |
April 22 – Back to Melbourne
We meandered back to Melbourne and
stopped into a brewery and a winery. The Otway Brewery had some very
nice beers and we picked up a couple of whit's for Ingo. They were
pricey but were very nice. We tried to go to some wineries on the
way back but only 1 out of 3 we tried to go to was open. They wine
was okay but nothing specially. We pulled into an empty motel
parking lot and popped the top to make ourselves lunch. We arrived
back into Diamond Creek and Beau went off to badminton with Ingo
while I was lazy at the house. Tomorrow is our first day of work.
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