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Sarah's Travels
Last time I left off I think I was about to go on the Barossa Wine Tour in Adelaide. I can honestly say it was everything a backpacker wine tour was supposed to be! After a breakfast of egg and bacon sandwiches we stopped off at the Jacobs Creek winery and at 10.30am we sampled our first eight wines!! It only went down hill after that. We had two more wineries before a lunch of steak and chips and then one more which was where we could try as many wines as we liked as many times as we liked! As you can imagine we were all quite merry by the time we got back to the hostel, which was just in time for England's first World Cup game.
Whilst in Adelaide I also took a two day tour of Kangaroo Island which was an incredible experience. The Island is one quarter nature reserve; however the rest is also full of native wildlife. We saw Kangaroos playing chicken with on coming cars, possums stealing our marshmallows when we were round the campfire, we also had dolphins playing around our charter boat at sunset as well as koalas, wallabies, tiger snakes and seals. There are two main highlights of my trip; the first was sand boarding over the sand dunes in the middle of the island! The sand was quite wet so we didn't really pick up much speed but if you hit a dry patch wow could you go fast! My other highlight was a place called Seal Bay. It's the only place in the world where you can walk along the beach amongst a colony of Sea Lions. They are literally one or two meters away from you, and it was only about four months ago that the females gave birth so there were cubs all over the place. It was an amazing place and if anyone comes to Adelaide, I totally recommend a few days on KI.
The following three days was spent getting from Adelaide to Melbourne on tour via the Great Ocean Road. The three days were packed with all the great sights along the way. The first morning was a lot of driving but by the afternoon we had reached the Grampians - these are the mountains at the southern most point of the Great Dividing Range which runs the entire length of Australia along the east side of the country. In the afternoon we did a mini hike to a look out point and saw some other local attractions before checking into our hostel for the night. The next day was our proper hike in the Grampians. We were supposed to walk to a place called the pinnacle but due to extensive forest fires at the beginning of the year the hike was closed off so we decided to walk to the highest point of the Grampians - up Mount William instead. It was an exhausting walk up some very steep terrain but as usual the view was worth it from the top! In the afternoon we hit the GOR and had several stops along the way to our hostel to see the various rock formations the road is famous for. The highlight was the 12 Apostles (of which there are actually 13 and used to be 18 before some collapsed!) The photo at the top of this page is of the Apostles. We were supposed to see a magnificent sunset but it was pouring down with rain and we could hardly see the rocks and there was no sign at all of the sun! But we went back in the morning and were able to get some much better views. Later on in the day we also saw Great Southern Whales. We passed through an area that they came through every year on their way to the warmer waters of the east coast. It was an amazing sight as they were only about 20 metres from the beach. I could have watched them for hours!! Finally we were on our last leg of the journey on the way into Melbourne but we had one last stop at the world famous Bells 'surf' Beach, and there were even some crazy people who were surfing in what must have been icy cold water!
Now I'm finally in Melbourne and am looking forward to seeing the city that everyone has raved about!
I hope you are all well and I'll catch up more soon
Sarah xx
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