Road Trip!

We have a new travel companion, Mick. He's only 16, but he has traveled a heck of a lot of Australia (300,000 km or so) and will be travelling a bunch more with us. So far we've we've travelled over a thousand kilometres up and down the Great Ocean Road in our new (ie 16 yr old), shiny (now dusty), red ford laser (Mick). We (or at least Steve since I can't drive manual yet) have pushed Mick to his limits on 4WD dirt tracks and curvy ocean roads and we've come out alive, so that's a good sign.

We started out our road trip in Torquay - surf capital of Australia. Did some window shopping in Roxy, Billabong, Rip Curl and so on. Visited the Surf Museum and were awed by the number and variety of surf boards that have been constructed over the years. Imagine surfing on a 18 foot, wood board. It's kind of insane. Of course we actually had to try surfing ourselves. Steve is an old pro, however it was my first time so we took a lesson. I had fun, though it's really hard and definitely takes more than 2 hours to learn. Hopefully we'll get out a number of more times this summer so that I can get better.

From Torquay we continued on down the Great Ocean Road (built after the first world war by returning service men for those who are interested). We camped two nights for free in a Scout Camp (Steve lied and said he was still a Scout leader - bad Steve). We did some bush walks around there and were terrorized by flies . (They don't bite, but are wicked annoying.) We drove farther, visited waterfalls, saw echinas in the wild (wiki it if you don't know what one is), did a treetop walk, camped for a couple nights in Otway national park, saw the 12 apostlees and other geologic formations, survived a thundstorm in our tent, then finally drove back the way we came, past Melbourne ending up on Philips Island where we are now.

Last night we went out to watch the "Penguin Parade". The "Penguin Parade", happening every night around dusk, is the return of a 800 strong penguin colony from the ocean where they feed to the beach/dunes where they social, mate and sleep it off. They are the funniest little penguins - only about a foot tall but sooo noisy.

Today we're planning on heading east towards Wilson's Prom, another national park. It is a fine, sunny day, so perfect for spending in a car! Yay road trip!