Touring the Great Ocean Road

I am currently sitting in a restaurant called Cuda Bar in a small town called Lorne along the great ocean road. For $2/wing Stew was able to get some chicken wings, and by some i mean 4...lets not over do it Australia. MAN are they gonna die when we open our own chicken wing place here. I got a salad and a duck spring roll which was pretty good. We drove here today from Geelong where we slept last night in a parking lot behind the local movie theatre. We saw the movie Hugo as well as New Year's Eve which we snuck into after Hugo. I love NYE as obviously it was full of my favourite celebrities and I hadn't seen a movie in the theatre in Australia yet. The parking lot proved to be a good location because the parking lot was in behind the theatre, free from busy traffic or mall security. Our other option was going to be to take part in a "lock in" at an internet and gaming cafe where a tonne of people (computer geeks, yes im gonn say it) pay $18 to be locked in for 12 hours straight to play games like world of warcraft and call of duty. being as stew and i dont play those we'd have been using it to stream tv shows all night/a warm place ot stay for the night for cheaper than a hostel. We didn't end up going for it but when we arrived this morning to use the internet for an hour the smell of sweaty nerds was ripe hahaha. In hindsight, it would have been legendary to see the crowd in there....

We spent a night in Melbourne a couple nights ago. We headed towards Melbourne from Canberra, sadly having to say a temporary goodbye to our new friends Charmaine and Owen. We headed towards Melbourne and stopped at a free campsite in Wagga Wagga which consisted of an open field and other campers, trailers, etc. set up. There were a million cockatoo's sqawking their heads off so I woke up pretty early wishing I had a bee bee gun to shut them up. ha. From wagga wagga we drove and stopped in Albury, a cute little town that we ate lunch in and then continued on to Melbourne. We had a small dinner in a pub-like restaurant for happy hour and then continued to our hostel. Since every hostel was full we ended up in Elizabeth Street hostel which was right by the Victoria markets and owned by some asians. The best part was that the front desk was located in a variety store, also owned by the same asians haha. It was a cheap hostel though and we ended up making friends with a Taiwanese guy named Dandy who was quite the  character. He had a black eye when Stew met him and his story about how it happened changed with a bit more detail every time we got more information out of him. We had some drinks with him and then headed down to a bar on the corner attached to a hostel called Melbourne Interantional. It was pretty cool, good old 90s music and we met some Canadian girls later in the evening. Dandy joined us as well and I think was more than happy to see Stew as he showed up ALSO wearing a plaid shirt like the one stew chose for the night and couldn't stop following him haha. I was lucky to get my travel buddy back to leave the place!

In the morning we had breakfast at a place called Jasper Kitchen and then we made the drive towards Geelong. Being hungover we didn't do too much in Geelong besides the movies and eating at Nando's for some chicken wraps. We got up this morning and did our usual routine of using a McDonalds bathroom to wash up, brush our teetth and grab some coffee. We drove the great ocean road today and stopped in Bells Beach and Angelsea to watch the local surfers. Stew was going to go out at Bells but it was all realllllly good locals and it was a little cool, which explained the full body wetsuits every surfer was wearing. We stayed at Angelsea for a bit, enough time to catch some sun again and read a bit of my book. We carried on to Lorne later and stopped at a little lagoon we saw from the road to go and bathe in. Equipped with bars of soap, shampoo and whats left of our dignity at this point we headed to the just-past knee deep water to wash up amongst the families with their children enjoying their day at the beach. At this point being in Australia for exactly 4 months today, its starting to not phase me at all when we bathe, brush our teeth or change in public areas. AND we wore bathing suits in the water, so it could have been worse haha.

Tonight we're staying at a free campsite up a longgggggggggggggg hill from Lorne that has toilets and an open field to park our van. Tomorrow we are plannin to get up early so that Stew can  go for a surf and I can run along the coast. We'll be starting to make our trek back up towards Sydney to the Hunter Valley area for our NEW JOBS as grape pickers in wine country. We found out just before we left canberra that we got jobs in the hunter valley and will be picking grapes every day for about $19/hour. NOT bad if you ask us, especially since we've been out of work for a solid couple months now. We'll be starting that job on the 21st of January so we have about 5-6 days to get back up to that area, just depending on how many hours we drive each day we will make it there sooner or later. We will probably stop inCanberra to see Owen and Charmaine again and then continue to work. We'll be staying in a caravan park close to a winery and we'll be working at about 6am everyday until it gets too hot. Should be decent money and since we both have experience (according to the lies on our resumes) it should be a breeze ;)

Anyways, Victoria Australia has been great despite the cooler climate but we have to appreciate it for now as once we head up and in land we're going to be melting. We've been in long pants and sweatshirts almost every night since Sydney so itll be a nice change to be in shorts a lot more. The nights can be quite cool in the van these days but luckily we have blankets and hoodies to keep us warm. Seeing the ocean again has been awesome and definitely worth driving down if you ever come to Australia. We've been back to our routine again of driving aimlessly, googling spots to stop and basically parking whenever we see a cool place or beach and sleeping wherever we won't get arrested for trespassing ha. Showers come slim to none but when we do find a way to bathe its pretty amazing. Appreciating the smaller things in life has been somethin we've adjusted to quite well.

Just want to give a big shout out to all those celebrating monster jam this weekend!!! We both totally wish we could be there just for today to be celebrating in red neck attire (fubar styles) and cheering on gravedigger. Stew was able to skype with the gang this morning and we're thinking of you all and hopin its just as epic as last year and for stew the many many years before. Love and miss you all, thinking about our friends and families all along our journey :)