A night in jail, wild animals, and other shenanigans...

LOL... No worries I did stay the night in jail but it was an old jail that was converted into a hostel :-)  It was actually my favorite hostel to stay in since I've been here.  The founders had information written around the location that gave a history of the place.  It was really cool actually, and a bit sad.

So I have a funny story... I don't know if I can make it sound as funny as it actually was but here we go.  My travel mates and I were given the suggestion at the hostel to go to a sinkhole and cave at night where we could feed possum and watch a light show in the 2 different locations.  We went to the cave first and thought it was nice but not that great.  When we got to the sinkhole with the possum we each grabbed a slice of bread.  Only one of us had a proper "torch" (their term for flashlight here).  It was extremely dark but there were some decorative lights.  Long story short, we are all looking for the possum and listening to try to find them.  One of my travel mates begins to walk backward very slowly and is throwing pieces of bread in front of her.  She said, "I hear something," and that was enough for me to get scared.  I threw my piece of bread behind me and tried to take off running.  I would like to emphasize the word "tried" because I was not very successful.  I fell to my knees after about 2 steps in my attempted sprint because it was sort of a ramp/hill type cement incline. I tried to get up quickly but only succeeded in further falling to the point that I was on my back somehow!?!  I was laughing SO HARD that tears were coming out of my eyes.  There was NO WAY to play off that fall at all.  Even as I'm writing this I'm laughing because it was ridiculous.  Initially we could not spot my piece of bread but then saw it several feet away, lol.  Anyway, I scared the possum away but eventually a couple of them came out and my travel mates fed and pet the possum.

Three of us shared in the driving responsibilities to get from Adelaide to Melbourne.  Going along the Great Ocean Road was by far the prettiest and curviest stretch of the trip.  We were going up and around and this way and that way...  The scenery was gorgeous and well worth the car sickness experienced by one of the mates.  The ocean was on one side and the hills with beautiful green grass, sheep and homes were on the other for much of the trip.  It was really a lovely experience and nice to be able to stop and check out the different rock formations, waterfalls, beaches and towns along the way.   

Here in Melbourne I've not really done too much but still have a couple of days to explore.  I have gone to the market with it's amazingly priced fruits and vegetables.  I also did a free tour of one of the Sea Shepherd ships.  The travel mates and I ate in Chinatown yesterday for dinner and I'm going to head to the arts district at some point in the next couple of days.

Okay I think that is more than enough for you all... Enjoy the pics :-) 

I have finally seen some koala bears out in the wild!!!   We saw this one sleeping on our way leaving from Adelaide.

 

This is a possum... My travel mates fed and pet him while I took pictures because I just couldn't bounce back from the initial fear LOL.

 

Here they all are :-) (From Austria, England, and Amsterdam respectively)

 

So this is the sink hole at night time, you can't see much but in the day time it was amazing.  It was at night too but my camera couldn't capture the lights well enough...
 



Here is the sinkhole during the day... GORGEOUS!

There were bee hives in the sink hole hidden in the rocks...
 

This would be the old jail that we stayed in in Mt. Gambier.  Really cool history and information.

This is a view from outside of the old prison hostel that we stayed in...

Mt. Gambier has a blue lake and this is it... It used to be the opening to a volcano apparently!

So we saw a sign that said that there was a waterfall and we walked and this is what we saw and were obviously a bit disappointed that this was the end result...

Then someone saw a sign that pointed further down the trail and we came upon the actual Wannon Falls :-)

 

At the Grampians National Park in Victoria we decided to go up the Pinnacle trail walk however unsuccessfully because we thought it would be too dark by the time we got back and only 1 person had sufficient lighting to be able to get up and back...

We saw a lot of rocks like this and there was some nice scenery along the way as well...

 

There was a field of kangaroo just hanging out eating grass in the middle of the day... These were some of the biggest kangaroo that I have seen since traveling...

 

Sunset in the Grampians...

And now we have arrived at the Great Ocean Road... YES!!!

 

This was by far my favorite spot along the road.  It was beautiful and additionally we were very close to the ocean and saw a rainbow halo around the sun which was really cool...

Here is The Grotto! :-)

 My camera didn't do the best job of capturing the rainbow but you can faintly see it... Apparently it's called  a "halo."  It was a full circle rainbow around the sun.  It was not raining on the ground though!?!  SO COOL!

 

This would be the London Bridge scenery... More beautiful colors and interesting information on landscapes.

 

I think that this is the "12 Apostles"  There were 12 of those bigger separate rocks at one point but obviously this has been greatly reduced...

 

While at one of the beaches we went down (and then back up) 380 steps.  We sat and had some watermelon (Alicia ;-)) and went on a walk down the beach where there were some ship parts including this anchor :-)

 

This is a piece of the Great Ocean Road.  It does no justice to the actual road but you get an idea of the scenery that was on the opposite side of the ocean...

 

I don't remember which waterfall this was but it was pretty... lol

 

This was along the Great Ocean Road, not at the beginning or the end, just somewhere in between.  They also had some information about how it was in memorial to war veterans along with the statue beside it...

 

We were headed to the lighthouse...

 

And here it is... Not the best weather but good enough :-)

 

The sunset welcomed us to Melbourne...

 

City living once again...

 

 This amazing mosaic was by the Yarra River.  I was amazed (and jealous of how artistic I am not).

Just a close up view of the mosaic... SO COOL!!!

 

Please look up information on this organization, the Sea Shephards...  This is the "Steve Irwin" and beside it is the "Bob Barker" which is the one that I did the tour on.  It was inevitable that at some point on this trip something make me cry and here it was... They showed a video about how they saved 932 whales last year in the Arctic.  It was a cool and informative tour...

This is the ship I toured on with one of my travel mates.

I'll be here in Melbourne for a bit longer and then on to the next place.  I'm actually going to be flying domestically here for the next trip because it was cheaper than my driving excursions have been.

Love you,
Me