Update number 2

28th
after breakfast we moved on toward's Melbourne, and drove straight through/under it, their M1 goes through the city, with no M25 style ring road, odd, but made for a couple of cool pictures. Once out the otherside, we headed on to the Great Ocean road, down past Geelong (pronounced juhlong) where they make the Ford Falcon, (mhmm beasty - Remember we used to have xr2s,3s and 4s? well they have xr4 is a fiesta, xr5 is a focus and falconas and folcon utes can be xr6 or xr8. shiny) We past through Torquay, and stopped at Anglesey Beach for a bit, driving past the clouds from the bushires, again, more goo pics, but I was driving, so couldn't take any, to the beach where the sandflies attacked me! :( then, back in the van for some of the most awesome roads, the view was incredible for most of the time, (when I could take my eyes off the road for long enough to see it, and the roads were twisty and cambered and with inclines and declines and hairpins, would've been great fun to drive in a big Ozzie v8) We finally stoped off in Lavers Hill Roadhouse, a pretty barren place, bt it was nice enough, we went to the bar and had a few beers and got chatting to one of the very drunk locals who was one of only two fern exporters from Australia years ago, and has won some prize at the chelsea flower show 8 times. He was cool, if drunk. We were generally a little weary of him, but it was really good to get chatting to a proper self procliamed Ozzie 'Redneck' and it was nice that he just kinda rolled up and started chatting, (though secretly we're sure he just wanted to steal our chips!)
Also, Rob went through a spate f hitting his head on the back door of the van as when it opened it wasn't quite high enough for me or him to avoid, and we both had days where we clouted it a fair few times, I think Rob managed 5 on that day!

29th
So we decided not to have breakfast at the campsite, and head down the road and have breakfast at the site of the 12 Apostles. It's quite nicely set up there, with a nice walk, some really great lookouts and a few information boards around the place to explain what you're seeing. They had helicopter rides there too, but not on our budget, we weren't even interested. hehe. We continued down the coastline for the rest of the day, loads more sights and pictures, like Port Campbell, which looked nice as we drove through it, and even nicer from up on the clff top, (there will be pics on the ol bookface as the Irish call it.
Was quite a thoughtful day really, seeing all of the coastline and the features, like the Bay of Matyrs and Bay of islands, and thinking about how all this came about, I'm quite logical and scientific I like to think, but as I've said before I have my own types of beliefs, so it did get me thinking alot about religion and different thoughts on creation etc, I do believe in God. But at the same time, the big bang theory seems most agreeable to me. So my theory would be that God created the big bang, and all the elements contained within to make everything we see now. Think about it, we come from just a couple of simple cells when we start, and grow into these large beings, so why not the universe? We also had a good bit of rocking out going on on the bus, which was great. The only downside was the phone signal is shocking out here, even the Aus Vodafone's a bit cack in places, so I've got no chance of the regional '3' network yet, hopefully I'll get some in Cairns and can use the ol mobile.
The road was immense and it kinda dawned on me a bit more just how much we're trying to do in a short space of time, it would've been great to have more time and space to have done the great ocean road. Eventually, we got to the end, and had a McDonalds, and met up with Gobo and Matt too which was cool. We drove back to Melbourne along the Princes Highway which was just long and straight, tried to get in a campsite near the city which turned out to be full, so we drove down to Dandenong (dandy-nong) passing St Kilda and all the people leaving the Grand Prix, and set up ourselves at Big4 Tourist Park Dandenong. Where we met John and Shaun. John's an ol Brummie who's been in Oz for about 24 years, recently divorced and now touring round working as a nurse, Nicest guy in the world, but too soft with people, Shaun on the other hand is a proper Ozzie, drinking Bundi (Bundi-somethings Rum, which comes in a can.) He was pissed as a fart and couldn't walk in straight line, it was brilliant, we had dinner and chatted and took the mick out of each other for a few hours, learnt a few things, and he gave Becky his Union t-shirt, with the Eureka flag on it, which was made illegal to fly when working, it was a very entertaining, enlightening and engrossing evening. Joh let some Irish guys use his $50 000 land cruiser (v8 supercharged) to go buy some beers, (they had their own camper, this is why he's too soft.) and eventually we headed back to the van and slept. :)

30th
We went back to Melbourne to check into Base, our hostel for the next few days, and then dropped ol Bumble bee off. we kinda faffed and ran about for the afternoon, before getting ready and heading off for Neighbours night. Our cast members were Dr Karl Kennedy, Steve Parker and Carmella Camminiti. We were in the front row table and as the Doc ran out I hi-5d him, which was awesome. lol. the night conisists of questions to cast, general chat, a 3 round quiz (which we did not win, and rob was wasted halfway through the second round) and then Dr Karl's band to finish off. Who were actually very good, they did some good covers and some of their own stuff. I had a cool chat with Carmella, about coming out for mine and rob's birthday and being out to travel, she asked if I had a legal visa, lol, then asked about our plans, and finally wished me happy birthday for last month, and the same to Rob when he saw her. Hehe. We met some class people too, A scots lass called Hayley, an Ozzie called trent and a sheffield couple, Lucy and umm, I forget his name, he was very quiet though. All in all a top top night! :)

31st
Pretty much the whole day was taken up by going on a tour of the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) which is run by the Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC) which is essentially a unch of old bloke sin blue red and white blazers all seemingly named Ian (3 out of 3!) then we went to Federation square and Flinders street, has a quick look at the shops and then caught up with Sarah from Wake Up! when I was last out, which was nice. Then back to Base, preparing for the flight to Alice Springs tomorrow, which meant waking up at 5am!

1st
up at 5, bus transfer to airport at 6:10, flight at 8:20, to adelaide (which is like 30mins behinf Melbourne, which is weird as) then on to Alice which was a fair old trek. Got in mid afternoon, checked into Haven, our hostel, and basically got ourselves ready for our Just the centre tour to begin tomorrow, taking us to Ayres Rock. :)

2nd
we woke up, checked out of the hostel leaving our luggage in the secure container, then got on to the bus. the travel time from Alice to where we camped for the night (Kings Canyon) was about 5 and a half/6 hours by bus at about 100kmh all the way, with a few stops for refreshments and fuel. It was a mega trek but still good. we got to the campsite, had spag bol, met our fellow travellers (6 Irish, 4 swiss, 2 american, 1 japanese, 1 german, 1 Ozzie and 1 Dutch.) then we got our Ozzie 'Swags' and slept out under the stars, it was nice and warm and the sky was incredible, actually awesome, I can't explain, and the pictures didn't come out properly but I'll always remember the channel of stars, starlight and lack of clouds!