Australia Days 3-4: Warnambool to Bordertown, Bordertown to Cowtowie (with a new car battery!)

Last Wednesday morning, we woke up in Warnambool after a sweeping 2-day tour of the Great Ocean Road. We drove through the town and came upon, what else?, another PLAYGROUND. This playground, according to my niece, is legendary. LEGENDARY, I TELL YOU. They had been here 3 years ago, and she has been talking about it ever since. So we spent a pleasant, sunny morning running around and checking out the play equipment, the maze, which you can see below, and the infamous "Flying Fox."

The maze.

What is a "Flying Fox," you ask? Watch the video.

This is why it is the Playground To Beat All Playgrounds.
I. Loved. The. Flying. Fox.

Patrick taking a turn.

Then we drove practically across the street and checked out the sea. It was beautiful.

Patrick and I decided that if we ever move to Australia, we will live in Warnambool. It has it all. The sea, delicious fish and chips, and the Flying Fox.

What more could you want?

Oh, how about a whale lookout like Logan's Beach?

No whales spotted though. No worries, Warnambool also has a Cheese Factory!

So, let's see:
1. The sea
2. The Flying Fox
3. Potential for whale sightings
4. A cheese factory

SOLD.

We actually spent a good part of the day in Warnambool. Patrick's internet card that Carolyn and Andrew had bought for him was not working properly, so we had to drop in to the Telstra store. Two hours and a faulty SIM card later, we were on our way.

We headed towards the Grampians, a beautiful mountain range in Victoria.

We saw some Emus along the way to the Grampians. It made me think of Steve, Patrick's brother, who tried to teach my niece and nephew to call me Auntie Emu because he thought it was funny. Steve, these birds are not cute or pretty or dainty so I'm thinking I should maybe be offended.

The Grampians in all their glory.

Unfortunately, we had to spend a little more time in Warnambool than we had expected, so it got dark pretty early into our tour of the Grampians. We tried to make it to McKenzie Falls, but it was so dark by the time we got there that we couldn't see anything. We stayed the night with some friends of Carolyn and Andrew's in Bordertown. They fixed us a GREAT meal of homemade pasta. We had never had homemade pasta. It was delicious! We enjoyed chatting with them and getting to know them. Mr. Hughes used to be a 9th grade English teacher, so we had an instant connection. He gave me many ideas to try out for next school year!

The next morning, we said all of our goodbyes, got in the car, attempted to start it, and nothing happened. Completely dead. We spent the morning waiting for a new battery to arrive and get changed. I took my niece to, you guessed it, another playground!

Because we got started late, Thursday turned out to be mostly a driving day. Our goal was to make it to Caltowie, to the farm where Andrew's sister and her family lives. We drove most of the day, only stopping to stretch our legs, to make some lunch on the side of the road, and to cross the mighty Murray River.

We pulled our car right onto this little ferry, and in less than 10 minutes they had pulled us across on a cable. Pretty neat.

We were just about to the farm when the sun began to set. It was the most beautiful sunset we had seen so far. It seemed to hang around for a long time.

We were welcomed by Andrew's family to the farm. His sister had fixed us a beautiful meal of roast lamb (homegrown!), roasted potatoes and pumpkin, fresh peas and cabbage. We had mulberry pie and custard for dessert. Yum. We sat around the fire and talked until bedtime, only briefly interrupted for a "second dessert" of pavlova and fruit. The tradition here is to have your dinner ("tea") and then dessert a little later, which they call supper. It's all a little confusing, but it works out for good in the end, don't worry.

Though it was one of the coldest nights we'd had, we had plenty of quilts on our bed and were plenty warm. We slept well and woke up early the next morning to catch the sunrise and milk the cow!

Australia Days 1-2: The Great Ocean Road

We arrived in Australia last Monday, soaring remarkably easily through customs and were met by my sister-in-law and brother-in-law, who was decked out in his American gear. Carolyn had gotten Krispy Kreme doughnuts at the airport, so immediately we felt right at home. On the very first day I saw my first kangaroo! In a field after lunch as we drove by there were a bunch of them playing and jumping around.

We set out for a sweeping tour of the Great Ocean Road, which goes along the coast. The building of the road was a way for the Australian government to provide work for soldiers returning home from World War 1. This is the memorial site. We visited Back Beach and Front Beach at Torquay. We also visited Bells Beach. Beautiful coastline.

This was our first stop for lunch at Front Beach. If it were up to my niece we would do the whole tour from playground to playground. This would be the first of many "PG" visits to come.

We stopped in to see Erskine Falls just slightly north of Lorne, a small town along the Great Ocean Road. (Sidenote: We had also stopped at another playground in Lorne, of course. Here we polished off what was left of the doughnuts, Patrick looked for a place with internet to turn in his most recent paper, Carolyn and I visited the thrift shop, and my niece bounced away on built in trampolines on the playground. These are some serious playgrounds over here. More on that to come.)

Erskine Falls.

We saw the sunset on the coast as we drove through that first night.


We stayed at Laver's Lodge at Laver's Hill, another small town. It was a pretty rustic, yet quaint little cottage. We fixed dinner (which they call "Tea") together and sat around the table talking. It was nice to have a homemade meal and not eat out, which we had done for several days straight!

I said the place was rustic. This was my first introduction to "composting toilets." See the part where it says it's scary down there? It was. Basically a big hole in the ground. Patrick thought this sign hanging in the bathroom at the cottage was hilarious.

Tuesday morning we packed up and set out to see Triplet Falls. It was a good hour stroll through the rain forest, down and around to the falls. It's called Triplet Falls, obvsiously, there are 3 of them. Here's the most powerful one. It was gorgeous.

Later that morning, on the way to see the Twelve Apostles, we stopped off at a cheese factory for a tasting and tour. A good decision indeed. This is when a fierce love affair with cheese tastings would begin.

After the factory, still on the way to the Twelve Apostles, we stopped at Gibson Steps (to work off the cheese we had just consumed) and walked all the way down to the gorgeous beach.

A prelude to the Twelve Apostles. Just a random rock at the Gibson Steps beach.

And, without further ado, The Twelve Apostles.

My favorite stop of the day was at Lochard Gorge. Here is what you see when you pull up. Magnificent.

Here is the inside. The story here is that a ship wrecked here in the 1800s. You can see why. The water coming in here is so powerful and crashes furiously on the rocks. There were two survivors, a man and a woman. They were stranded on this beach overnight before he was able to climb out and find help for her.

Here we are at The Arch, another gorgeous stopoff.

And the infamous London Bridge, which literally fell down in 1990. There used to be a piece connecting the two (forming the bridge). When it fell off into the sea and broke, some tourists were stranded over on the island part. They had to send a helicopter to get them.

And finally we saw the sunset as we arrived at the Bay of Islands.

We ended the evening in a comfy apartment room in Warnambool. We had the aussie classic of Fish and Chips for dinner and settled in for the night.

A truly amazing day and a great introduction to Australia. I am in awe of God's work.

The rest of New Zealand

This will be a long post, but I'm attempting to catch up! Currently we have are in Australia! We've made it to Kangaroo Island, where my sister-in-law and brother-in-law reside and we are relaxing and catching up from our whirlwind trip through Australia over the last week. Before we get to that, though, I thought I should finish up showing you the rest of our New Zealand trip! I'll do the last 3 days in this post, so I will understand if you get tired of reading and looking through our tons of pictures!

Some of you asked to see a map of where we have traveled to see just how much of NZ we covered. Patrick figured it up to around 2800 kilometers! We did see enough, though, to know that we hope to come back and spend some more time in many of the places that we only got to pass through.
We awoke on Friday morning in Greymouth on the West Coast of the South Island and headed out. Our goal was to go through Westport, see some of the West Coast and then head back to Picton, where the ferry leaves, take the ferry across and stay the night in Wellington. Lofty aspirations, indeed. We stopped on the beach at Greymouth to see another sunrise. The beauty of the waves crashing against the rocks was amazing and powerful. We are continually amazed at how God's glory is displayed in his creation. Romans 1:20 comes to mind.

We also stopped along the way at Paparoa National Park, home of the infamous Pancake Rocks. I had seen pictures of this place in a book at the chiropractor's office when we first got here, so I jumped on the chance to see it in person. It was a nice 20-30 minute walk through the little lookout park area.

The Pancake Rocks:

After getting back in the car we realized we had spent a little too much time lingering at Paparoa and needed to really book it to get to the ferry on time. From then on, we just snapped pictures along the way as we drove back to Picton.

We literally made it JUST IN TIME. We were the last car in the queue at the ferry station!


Here's Patrick attempting to do a little work on the ferry.

I took my Dramamine on time and did not try to be brave. I immediately found my little seat by the smoke stacks and cozied up. This was a different ship, so it took a little hunting to find the best seat, but it worked! I did not get seasick! I was even able to walk around a little and get some pictures.


Here's a view coming back into the North Island.

The city of Wellington.

We got to our hotel and checked in. The room was very nice and comfortable. Of course I forgot to take pictures of it. We went out to explore the city a little and find some dinner. We ended up eating at a Cuban Kebab place in the city square. They made us some great chicken wraps! We settled in for the night and didn't set the alarm for once.

Saturday morning we drove from Wellington north. We were headed towards Taupo (where the beautiful lake from the first day's drive was) where we hoped to spend the night. We decided to take a little detour and explore some of the west coast of the North Island. Here are some pictures as we drove.

We stopped for coffee at this little place and wished we were hungry! It would have been a great little place for lunch. They had a fire going and were packed with people. The food smelled great.

In our attempt to take the scenic route, we ended up on Highway 43, which was also called the Forgotten World Highway. It was gorgeous countryside.

We soon found out why it was called the Forgotten World Highway, because we didn't see another car or come to any sort of town for over 2 hours. As it got dark we were starting to get a little worried.

FINALLY we came to a little town and stopped for dinner at this little restaurant that used to be a train car. It was the only place open in the town but the food was great! We had steak and baked potato for dinner and warmed up with a cup of tea before getting back on the road for another hour's drive to Taupo.

At Taupo, we pulled into the Cottage Mews Motel to stay the night. The innkeeper was a lovely lady who was so hospitable and nice. We chatted for a while and it turns out that she had studied English Literature and loved to read. Obviously we had a lot in common. The room was cozy and warmed up quickly. As you can see, there was a huge tub right next to the bed! It was quite bizarre, but added to the charm of the room. There was also a cute little patio out back.

We left the next morning, headed for Auckland where we would fly out to Australia the next day. We stopped in Rotaruoa because so many people along the way said we needed to see the geothermal spots.

We went to a self-described "Thermal Wonderland" and did a walk through.

At the end of the tour you could drive over and see this geyser that supposedly went off at the same time everyday. Turns out, it does this because they put something in it to make it explode. We were a little disappointed that the demonstration was fake, but it was still pretty neat to see.

Finally, we headed back to Auckland, snapping pictures along the way. Patrick took this picture of a huge buck to show all of his friends who love to hunt.

We stopped for lunch on our last day at Columbus Coffee. It was absolutely the best meal we had in New Zealand. Patrick had an omelet and I had a roasted veggie sandwich. We split some French Onion Soup. It was all very delicious and a great way to end our trip.

We arrived in Auckland that evening. Patrick had to write a paper and we had to fly out at 6:00 the next morning so it was an early night (for me at least). We rested and set the alarms for early, early, early.

I can't believe it went by so quickly, but New Zealand was good to us. We hope to get back one day and see more of the South Island. On to Australia next! God is good to us.