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Sydney to Melbourne - The sleepy tour!

To get to Melbourne from Sydney was going to take us 3 days stopping off at some places along the way. There were only 7 of us on the tour so it was quite a nice small group where everyone got on really well. There were a couple of girls that lived really close to us as well, which was cool (one of them was from Eastbourne and the other had lived and gone to school in Tunbridge Wells!). We had a really cool tour guide who knew loads about central Australia and the aborigines, so I thought I'd ask him what all the aboriginals do with the money they make from tourists coming into Ayers Rock national park. Apparently they spend it on KFC and getting drunk! They love KFC it would seem! Glad to see the aboriginals are keeping the spirit of their heritage alive! To teach the younger ones a lesson, the elders would banish them to the wilderness and say "fend for your life out here, because money is worth nothing in the outback, but finding food and water is". To be honest I think once the elders die off, there won't be much aboriginal culture left. Out the back of Ayers Rock they've even built their own small town with swimming pools etc. You can't tell me thats how true aboringals live.

We stopped off at Canberra on the way and had a brief look around the town and at Parliament House. Canberra is a completely planned city and was only built because no-one could decide whether Sydney or Melbourne should be the capital! It's literally in the middle of knowhere! I also think it has to be the worst capital city in the world! Theres absolutely nothing memorable about it apart from how crap it is! Trev unbelievably enough said he preferred Canberra to Sydney because it was more chilled out! Putting asuide the fact that Australians think Canberra is a national joke, I thought that was one of the funniest things I've heard in my life! Sydney is one of the greatest cosmopolitan cities in the world, whereas Canberra is so shit, even the inhabitants of the country its in hate it! It's famous for 3 things apparently - politics, pyrotechnics and porn! We had a look around the Parliamanet building and the Senate and Representative rooms but thats it pretty much!

After picking up Trev, we drove to a place called Jindabyne, which is where we stayed for our first night. The town is built on the edge of a lake so the views from our hostel were really cool, especially when the sun was setting. I had a fantastic $4 steak (it just gets cheaper and cheaper!) while watching the Manchester derby. In the morning we drove through some of the Australian ski resorts (yes, you can go skiing in Australia!). Apparently, the road we were driving through would be covered by snow in 6 weeks time! We did a fantastic drive along a road called the Barry Way, which was basically a single car width dirt track through a mountain region. The bus would literally just fit down the road with a couple of centimetres to spare on the left side of the bus before there was a sheer drop down the side of the cliff! Our guide told us horror stories about a Japanese tour bus falling off the side not long ago killing everyone on board! We even needed a satellite phone in case we got in trouble while we were down the road! Only 5% of Australians will ever drive down that road in their lifetime, which is a shame because the scenery was amazing. You just had to hope no cars were coming the other way! Our guide used the technical method of looking for dust in the air ahead to tell if a car was coming! He told us to look out for the dog tree on the way. We thought he was talking about a rare type of tree, but no it was actually a dead dog hanging from a tree! It seems there were a lot of rednecks in the area we were driving through! There was also some weirdo who had left loads of rusting cars/machinery outside his house because he said it was art. He'd also make a sculpture of a kangaroo out of random crap, but used real kangaroo hands/feet! It was kind of grotesque. The guide said he would stop for 10 seconds so we could get some photos and then he was getting out of there in case the weirdo guy came out of his house!

Some Jack Johnson came on the radio and our guide randomly said he'd spent the night drinking with him because one of his friends knew him! I didn't realise Jack Johnson used to be a pro surfer and then one day when there was a pro surf tournament, the head of Sony Records was invited out onto the boat as well. Afterwards, they had a campfire whereJJ played some of his songs on his acoustic guitar and the head of Sony said "I'm going to make you a star!". Apparently JJ didn't like talking about himself and would rather find out stuff about other people because otherwise its him just going on about himself all the time and answering questions about 'his' life.

We stayed the evening at a place called Lakes Entrance where the sea meets this mass expanse of lakes. It looked pretty cool looking down on it from the hills. In the morning we got up really early to see the sunrise over the lake, which was awesome. Our final day should have included some walks around the areas we were driving to, but being that it was Monday night (and we all know what Monday night in Melbourne means don't we!) we all voted to cut down the walks so we could get to Melbourne in time for Neighbours night! The guide must have got so fed up with us. Here he was with all these walks we could do and all the whole bus could talk about all day was Neighbours! The fact that most the passengers onboard were girls meant that they were getting a tad over excited about seeing Karl Kennedy!

We stopped off at a place called Wilsons Promontory which is the most southerly point of Australia. We saw some really cool kangaroos there and some emu's in the wild, which was also a first for me. The mountains and trees around also looked pretty spectacular. The trees were completely bare, but the branches were all twisted and warped which made them look really interesting. The whole area with the backdrop of the river, trees and mountains seemed kind of mystical! The river was weird as well because if you put your hand in the water, your hand would come out all oily, which apparently was from the ti-tree oil that runs off the trees (the same oil used in beauty products). The 5km walk we were meant to do then turned into a walk along the beach so we could save time for getting to Melbourne. That then turned into sitting on the beach eating our lunch! We were all pretty lazy that day! He came to know us as the sleepy bus because everyone would be asleep all the time! Buses just make you feel so sleepy. As soon as you get off you're fine but then you get back on again and you just can't keep your eyes open! The beach was very nice though and probably had the biggest waves I've seen in Australia. The rest of the day was spent getting to Melbourne and spending our last few hours on the OZ Experience bus in Australia.

So we've now made it all the way to Melbourne, our last stop in Australia! It feels weird knowing we won't be getting on a bus again to go anywhere else in Australia because I'd got used to moving on to the next place all the time. We've got 9 days in Melbourne before moving onto New Zealand. Tonight though is Neighbours night at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow, and I'm off to meet Connor, Janelle, Madge and the one and only Dr Karl Kennedy! Woooooooooo!

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