Journey Falconbridge - Tahara

A few days after visiting Canberra, Catherin and me where on our way to Victoria. More specifically Catherins brother James and her mother who live on a farm in Tahara. We tried to leave at six in the morning, but due to some forgotten sandwiches we had to turn round and go back. Gave me another chance to say goodbye to Joe. So we finally left at seven. And we drove and drove and drove. Australia is huge. We filled up the tank to the brink and still stopped another three times that day to fill it up. We journeyed along the Hume highway that connects Sydney and Melbourn. Every two hours we would swap, as not to fall asleep on the journey as it is very long. We visitid and saw a few things along the way. Looking for Koalas along the highway, watching an Echidna crossing the highway and visiting a submarine in Holbrook (a town not near to the sea). Catherin had got a load of fruit for the journey and Australia has some issues with taking different kinds of fruit from one state to the other. It meant we had to eat four apples and four bananas by the time we crossed the boarder to Victoria at Aulbury. I had had enough of fruit to last me for the rest of the day. We passed Canberra, good that I had been there a few days prior. After about nine hours of driving we saw the skyline of Melbourne appear on the horizon. Looks very similar to Sydney's skyline, not as massive as Dubai's luckily. We got in to a bit of a queue on the way out of Melbourne towards the Great Ocean Road, but we pushed just ahead of the five o'clock commute. We arrived at the beginning of the Great Ocean road when the sun had just set, so we where hoping to see the sites in moonlight. After a very curvy road we had some dinner in a fishing town. The first one we went to turned out to be a high class restaurant on the shores of the ocean. We choose a fish & chip shop in stead and had a good meal for the both of us at the price of one meal in the other place. We carried on in pitch black surrounding towards the Twelve Apostles, a famous landmark along the Great Ocean Road. On the way we encountered a lot of deer, I had to stop at some points to let them jump the road, and a few kangaroos. Luckily we had no collision with any and we reached the Twelve Apostles. It seems like a site similar to Lands End in Cornwall, England. A site that was once a nice and quiet spot to visit, now turned in to a tourist attraction. As it was close to midnight when we arrived it was completely empty, just the two of us. We parked the car in one of the big car parks and walked to the sea front. The Twelve Apostles are a series of pillars that jut out of the sea. Catherin and me had a view of them in the dark of the night, as the moon and the stars where blocked out by a big dark cloud. We saw the foam crashing on them and silhouette of the stone structures but left after a quick watch, as a cold and wet wind was coming in from the sea. Antarctica is on the other side of that ocean, no wonder it was cold. We carried on with our swap driving, which was very important at this point as we had been driving for 17 hours at that point. We pulled in to our last petrol station and set of towards the farm. I nearly fell asleep driving, so Catherin took over for the last 100 kilometres whilst I had a rest. Apparently we nearly hit a fox, but I slept through that. At last after nearly 20 hours and 1400km of driving we reached Tahara, or more specifically Braeside farm. We just got out, grabbed our stuff, walked to the house (greeting a few dogs on the way), got the bedding sorted out and went to sleep. Who cares about the cobwebs about, I was tired. James and their mum had gone to bed already as it was really late, half past two at night.

Even if it was dark, still a good view of the Twelve Apostles (no pictures thought) with no tourists around. There are a loot of warnings against sleepy driving here, and being close to it I can understand them completely.