Kerry and Bens Travels: 2012

Friday 16 March 2012

Tues 28th – Now…..17th March 2012!! The Forgotten Blogg....

So since I started applying for jobs its all been a bit crazy, I got a reply the next morning from one company with an offer and then another company got in touch with another offer so I’ve been on the phone with both trying to organize jobs and locations etc. We wanted to take our time with the Great Ocean Road but cos of these job offers we ended up having to do it quicker than we liked… we still managed to stop at a recommended campsite, Johanna, for 3 nights on the way though, checking out a little bit of the local area, waterfalls and tracks… the last night turned out there was a HUGE storm, the tent was literally blowing onto Bennys face and there were puddles everywhere!! We discovered in the morning that the flap near Benny that’s a bit of fly-screen for ventilation at the bottom on the tent was OPEN on his side… that would explain all the puddles, soaking wet uggs, clothes and bed!! Thank goodness Benny had friends in Jan Juc, just outside of Torquay, we stayed with them for a couple of nights, dried out and checked out a couple of potential cars for me… Shane, Nic and their kids were such a cool family, with an amazing house Shane had built from scratch, think we’re gonna try and go back and catch up with them again now we’re settled… After saying bye to them we kept car hunting for me and I also met the Physio Manager for one job and decided to take it… We headed down to the Mornington Peninsula to check out where we were going to be based, Benny has a few contacts down this way for work and it suits us a bit better than living in the city. We started to try and find a house, which wasn’t as easy as we thought, there were no share houses on gum tree so we started to look at renting with a lease, not a huge amount on options there either… in the meantime we were staying in Balnarring car park near the beach, you had to pick the right end of the car park cos at 5am every morning a heap of horses in trailers rocked up for their morning exercise on the beach!! We quite liked the car park though J We eventually found a house we both LOVED, double garage and then upstairs is all open plan with a big balcony and 3 bedrooms, we raced down to the library to use their computers and printers to sort out our applications… after we put them into the real estate we realized it was Wednesday and so we probably wouldn’t hear back from the agent for a couple of days so we headed up to the National Park east of Melbs for some more camping J It was like a rainforest up there and Benny got really excited when it started to rain with the smell of the mud, saying that it reminded him of when he was a kid living in Lileydale, he also tried to tell me some of the massive holes in the ground where made by earth worms… I am yet to see one of these massive earth worms!! After camping for a couple of nights we’d arranged to see another Suzuki for me, while we were test driving it and getting excited cos it was a pretty perfect little car for me Benny got a call through from the Real Estate saying we’d got the house!!!! Yeeey, we paid the guy for the car, sorted out a permit to drive it back to the peninsula and organized to meet the owners of the house on Monday to negotiate if we could have the place furnished…

Since then we’ve moved in with the place fully furnished, its gorgeous and we’re loving being able to chill out on sofas and spread out in a queen sized bed with a mattress that doesn’t have body grooves in it!! Benny worked on my Suzuki and the mechanic has passed it as roadworthy so I’m just waiting to get it registered, I think I start work on the 26^th March and Bennys going to start calling his contacts next week to get some work too J So its all worked out pretty nicely!! We’ve got 3 bedrooms so if anyone fancies a holiday down to the Peninsula give me a call, there’s heaps of wineries and spas around that I cant wait to explore…. J xxx

Floating in the Pool of Siloam... 7x's salter than the sea

The Blue Lake at Mount Gambier

Great Ocean Road sight seeing

Waterfalls near Johanna

Rainforest walk to the waterfall

White Kangroos

Soaking wet uggs after the storm at Johanna.....not impressed (thankfully they dried out and are fine now!!)

Stuck in the mud camping in the bush east of Melbs, near Rawson and Mouth Baw Baw

Benny digging... me taking photos ;)

My new Suzuki!!!! :)))))

Mon 27th – Robe Area..

After a quick stop in Kingston to dry the bed sheets from last nights ‘storm’, wash the car and have a photo next to the BIG LOBSTER we kept going and found a place to camp right near the beach, I’m typing this from there now and am literally 20m away from the waves breaking on the beach… We’ve started to talk more about Melbs now as we’re both running low on funds, I’m applying for jobs etc and looking at cars for when we get there… the next stage of the adventure is about to begin but not before a little bit more beach time :-)

the BIG lobster

Breakfast on the beach

Sat 25th – Sun 26th – Salt Creek Beach Camping

As it was so crowded at the Murray River Mouth and the Coorong wasn’t amazing we’d kept going and this was the nearest point where we could get on the beach, it was a wide beach with dunes, a shell beach and a shore break that prevented swimming… unfortunately it was 40 when we got there, bloody HOT so we tried to cool off in the white wash, which resulted in me stacking it!!! Note to Europeans, topless sunbathing is not as accepted in Oz as it is in Europe!!!! The next couple of days were spent fishing for the BIG one… He did get a couple of Mulloway, his ‘unicorn’ fish but nothing huge unfortunately. The 2^nd night we were treated to an AMAZING sunset… but then the night was cloudy, windy and a bit rainy, which isn’t great when we’d dragged the mattress out and were sleeping on the ground under tarps…

Salt Beach fishing

Why it hurt when I stacked it!!

In his element :)

Our camp... trying to get some shade

First of the mulloways

first nights sunset

2nd of the mulloways

2nd nights sunset....

....just got better and better!!

yes, got to have the star jump photo!!!

sunset reflected in the white wash

3rd of the mulloways.... now just waiting for the BIG one, next time ;)

Fri 24th – Coorong National Park

Next morning we drove to Victor Harbour and stocked up on food etc, had a look at Goolwa and a dip in the ocean with some body surfing, a drive to the Murray River Mouth…. Too many people all with rods out so we turned around and had to drive around the river to get to where we wanted to be, cockle collecting on the mud flaps, we got heaps!!… we ended up camping in the Coorong National Park… We don’t know why the Camps6 book keeps ticking all these camp sites as ‘highly recommended’ as some of them are just, to quote Benny ‘shit holes’…. I think it looks nice in the photos but it wasn’t amazing… we did meet an elderly couple the next day though, who were into bird watching so appreciated it more than we did, they were pretty serious about it though with the cameras, tripods and bird calling whistle thing…. I recognised it from when I was little, I don’t own one now ;)

Mon 20th – Wed 22nd – Chapman River

After re-fueling a little, and enjoying Penneshaw Hotels finest wedges and a pint of Coopers each we headed out to the national park on the east side of the island, where we started, and found a camp spot on the other side of the river near the beach. We spent the next couple of days relaxing (yes we’re on holidays, I know you’re all jealous!) more attempts at fishing, beach walking, flying the kite…. It was so frigging windy, only a 2.6m kite but it took a fair bit of effort to control, great fun :-) We also did some brim fishing in the river, there were HEAPS just staring at you at the river banks, it was like something off ‘Finding Nemo’!! They were a bit fussy with their bait though, preferring lamb to anything else, we did try apple core, sushi paper and bread as well, the bread worked really well, Benny discovered that if you left it on the surface and kept the rod low you could hook them like that…

My favourite part of this side of the island though was “Chapman River Winerys”….. I’d googled it and it looked great but when we got there I was in love, it was based in a ‘tin shed’ or an old air craft hanger and was also an art gallery so had lovely paintings and sofas and stuff in an moroccany kind of feel, also an amazing chandeliers which set the place off brilliantly. Outside were miss-matched furniture, hanging baskets and a place where they must have open fires and logs to sit on around the bonfire…. Just gorgeous. We haven’t been eating out much (apart from pies and the occasional pub wedges) so I treated us to a tasting platter, Benny wasn’t keen at first but when it arrived he quickly changed his mind… have a look at the photos and you’ll see what I mean, YUMMM!! I think I’m biased about this place cos the old woman running it, also the artist, gave me a lovely compliment saying that it seems that I’ve got “oomph” I liked that as a little pick me up :)

After the winery we planned to get the last ferry off the island so we did a little bit more exploring around the Penneshaw area, including Benny rescuing a guy that was stuck on the beach with his 2WD and boat… After chatting with them and ordering a pizza to have on the ferry (the biggest ever!) we drove down and Benny commented “hmmm there seems to be a lot of cars here…” I agreed and said that as he didn’t want me to be organized and pre-booked he better go and see if there’s still room…. To cut a long story short, I got to say “I told you so” as the ferry was full AND the next morning ferry was full too… after munching on some pizza we went back down to see if they could squeeze us on, BONUS, we made it on and camped at the nearest National Park to Cape Jervis

Hmmm we seem to have lost a night somewhere… think it must have been on KI somewhere but all my dates were scribbled on the map that I lost….

Benny using the jack after trying to take a "short-cut"

Its not always warm in Oz!!

Cheeky night time possum

Doing our dishes for us

Chapman River Winery / Art gallery

YUMMY food platter :)

Biggest pizza ever while waiting for the ferry we just managed to squeeze onto

The Pelican Conversation

This conversation will only make sense if you know how much I’ve been enjoying the pelicans we’ve seen on our trip, they’re just so funny the way they waddle when they walk, take at least 10 flaps before they can take off, land like they’re water skiing, look like they’re too fat and heavy to fly and sound like a motor boat taking off!! Having said all that…

Both of us were watching a bird flying away from our advancing car and Benny says “I wish I was a bird” I replied that it would be pretty cool to be able to fly, Benny says “I think I’d like to come back as a wedgie (wedge-tailed eagle)…I sat and thought about it for a minute and said “I’ll come back as a pelican!!!” Benny burst out laughing and made a comment about my waddle ;)

Fri 17th – Sun 19th – DESSESURESS ??? Beach… Damn I made a note to check out how to spell it on the map and I threw the map out by mistake!!!

The surfer local guy told us to check out this park of KI as the national park was beautiful and there were heaps of fish… we’ve been here for 2 days so far and no fish!! We’ve found a campsite just out of the national park though so saved ourselves $24 camping fees :-) We were running low on food and Benny has no beer or chocolate (disaster!!) so I’d had enough of fishing and beach for one day and took the ute into town (about 30mins away) for a bit of a beer run and to top up on some food bits….I used the local pub for a quick toilet stop before heading back and the bouncer commented that he liked my car… I don’t think he liked the response “Thanks :-) It’s my boyfriends!” hahaha

We found a nice camp spot though, with a gorgeous beach view and some local pelicans to keep my entertained :-) Benny ended up catching 2 King George while we were there but that was after ALLLOOOOT of effort!!

Cleaning the King George

with the pelicans help...

Our camp for a few nights

Monday 27 February 2012

Thurs 16th –Stokes Beach

After packing up from Harveys we thought we check out another of the walks in the national park book, Ravine de Cassories (this might be spelt wrong…they’re the extinct bird anyway…) it was only 7km return but it was listed as ‘hard’. We set off in trainers and were soon discussing why it was listed as hard, the ground was really sandy and soft so we both did the rest of the walk in bare feet…. Including the end of the walk which was a sandy river bed with super slimey black mud, squidy toes, mmmm ;-) There were some pretty impressive caves just off the beach at the end of that walk. We camped at Stokes Beach that night, the beach was accessed trough this rock tunnel, the beach on the campsite side was covered in seaweed but once you’d gone through the tunnel it opened up into a lovely white sandy beach with a little rock pool area and some small surf waves :-) We enjoyed an evening ‘wash’ and some body surfing! That evening we got chatting to one of the locals who was a super keen surfer, quite entertaining to chat to but Benny and me have come to the same conclusion after listening to stories about bashing sharks on the nose and putting hands under rocks to pull out marron with super sharp pincers…South Aussies are bloody mad!!! The mossies were out in force that night and cos we were sleeping in the back of the ute I now have 6 bites on my FACE and goodness knows how many on my arms and hands…. Yes Im moaning on the blog cos Benny has had enough of me moaning to him ;)