December 18th - Now Boarding Flight AC123 to Nunavut

EMERGENCY! CODE RED! DEFCON ONE! SAVE US DOCTOR!

It has finally happened... We have had the dreaded Australian spider encounter and will now be heading home...

It was a lovely day, we drove down the beautiful Great Ocean Road, have a lovely BBQ with sausages before tucking ourselves in with a cup of tea and watching a couple episodes of our new favourite cooking show. We turned off the lights, but due to leaving the front windows open a crack, we had to keep turning them back on to kill the occasional mosquito that buzzed around. Nearly asleep, we sat up one more time to kill the last little bugger and BAM, sitting on the side panel by Holly's feet was the Thing, a huge, black, thick, hairy, ugly spider. About an inch and a half in diameter, he sat there, calm as ever, as we shrieked and leapt into the far corner of the van.

Sorry, if we had to suffer, so do you... 

Matt wrenched open the door and threw himself out, while Holly, still recovering from a larger one of these falling out of a toilet roll a couple weeks ago, was frozen in fear. Matt coaxed Holly out while keeping his eyes on the Thing, moving leisurely forward until he sat above the drivers side door. Now outside, we faced the question "Now what?". Neither of us fancied heading inside to engage in a death match with the beast and the matches were by the drivers side door so burning the car down wasn't an option either. We decided to defend our home, grabbing sticks and shoes and prepared our ambush. Matt, Holly's knight in shining armour, led the assault, opening the door and wacking the spider. Holly saw the spider drop, but had we killed it? We searched the car and the ground as well as we could in the light of our torches, but no body was recovered. The lack of evidence disturbed us, what if he was still in there, furious with a sore behind? What choice did we have, it was either stay outside and be eaten alive by mosquitoes and face the possum angrily marking his territory in the tree above us or get back into the van with the spider. Against all our instincts, we got into the death box. Jumpy, on edge, and with all the lights on, we tried to settle in for the night. We eventually settled and figured if the Thing was still in the car, we would have seen it already. We fell into a fitful sleep and awoke early the next morning, eager to sweep the car and get out of there. We packed up and were about to head off, Holly opened her door to get in and there he was, perched between the door and the car, ready to pounce. Equally relieved we'd found him now and terrified, we prepped for the second assault. Holly, Matt's knight in shining armour, flicked him off the door with a stick and Matt delivered the finally stomp that defeated our enemy once and for all. Needless to say, a home invasion wasn't what we signed up for so we'll be leaving Australia as soon as we can.

While we pack, let us give you a run down on our last leg of the journey.

From Leongatha, we drove up to Gembrook on the very outskirts of Melbourne and prepared to go into the city. There was no camping in Melbourne so we based ourselves here while we got our plan together. We decided to head down to Philips Island before we tackled the big city, and aren't we glad we did. The island was secluded and beautiful and famous for the Penguin Parade, which means the island was home to hundred of penguins! Only active at sunset, we didn't get to see the penguins in action but a couple restless birds in their nests caught out attention and we took a couple of awkward pictures.

Penguins look different in Australia.

Excuse the over-exposure, penguins in holes are hard to photograph!

The Island itself was gorgeous too.

On our way back from the island we impulsively stopped off at a farm advertising fresh cherries and we had stumbled onto a friendly centre we a small petting zoo where Holly instantly became best friends with a goat. So distracted, we forgot about the cherries and headed back to Gembrook and onto Yarra Valley the next day. Since we didn't want to drive in Melbourne, we drove about half and hour to Lilydale and took the train in from there.

Holly's new travel companion.

Our first day in the city we visited the Australian Center for Moving Images (A.C.M.I), a museum dedicated to film, T.V., Video Games, and Culture, overwhelming yet extremely interesting and we highly recommend it, if you're ever in the area. For lunch, we headed to a Michelin Star restaurant, Hawker Chan, and enjoyed a lovely meal before heading back to the museum to finish up, enjoyed a Rice Festival we stumbled upon, and back to our van. The next day we wandered back into town and explored the city, taking in the Botanical Gardens, St. Kilda and ate the worlds best dumplings from Shanghai Dumpling House and followed by the worlds best croissants from Lune Croissanterie. Melbourne is the perfect place to visit if you are a foodie, so naturally, we loved it.

View from the War Memorial we stumbled on to (if it wasn't there before
Matt arrived, it appeared when he did!).

The botanical gardens with the Melbourne skyline.

Worried we'd give up the van life if we stayed another day, we decided we'd seen all we wanted to from the city. However, in a now typically Holly-Matt fashion, we weren't moving forward, we were backtracking towards Leongatha to visit the Wilson Promontory National Park, the southern most tip of Australia. It was a stunning drive through the park and even more beautiful views from hikes.

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Satisfied, we drove through Melbourne and out the other side, stopping in Geelong before taking on the Great Ocean Road.

We managed to out-manoeuvre the weather and we had a spectacular sunny day to complete our drive. The views were breathe-taking and we stopped in Port Campbell to see the Twelve Apostles, visited the (other) London Bridge, stopped in Warranbool (home of the The Incident) and drove all the way to just outside Portland, were we stopped at a beautiful campsite, home to very friendly wildlife.

The Twelve Apostles.

London Bridge.

A bit beachier than we remember!

Little wallaby on our front steps.

Our new neighbour! Loves oatmeal by the way.

Considering a career as Snow White.

And here we are in Portland, updating the blog and looking at the next flight home... Though, looking over what we have seen... Maybe we'll stay another week... Maybe a month.... Or two....