Tag Archives: melbourne

Day Thirty-Three – Alice Springs to Auckland – Airline Rush

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I only had the morning left in Alice to do some last minute sightseeing and then head off to Auckland.

Ed and I headed to the telegraph station to check out the first settlements of Alice Springs. Alice was originally set up as a telegraph station to pas messages through from Darwin to Adelaide. It was pretty cool so see what it may have been like in the late 19th century and how much life has changed in the past 100 years through the invention of cars, Internet and most importantly, air conditioning.

We then quickly drove to the Tropic of Capricorn to get a cheeky photo before rushing home, cramming everything into my bag and heading out to the airport. I said my goodbyes and fly off to Adelaide.

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Flying into Adelaide I saw the forest fire which burnt down hundreds of homes. Although disastrous it was an awesome sight. After arriving in Adelaide I ran to my next flight, boarded and waited. About an hour after we were meant to depart we were all made to disembark due to a fuel leak on the plane. So I waited for 5 hours until my next flight to Melbourne.

Arriving in Melbourne later gave me an hour and a half to collect my bag and re check. Only my bag didn’t come and I spent the next 45 minutes organising for it to be sent to Auckland. They handed me a washbag and sent me on my way giving me 45 minutes to check in and get I my flight but I managed it and I was on my way to Auckland.

Day Twenty-Eight – Adelaide to Alice Springs – Breakdowns and Ghost Towns

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The route from Melbourne to Alice Springs

The route from Melbourne to Alice Springs

We had been driving through the night and by sunrise we had arrived in Adelaide.  We stopped for fuel and kept driving.  The car seemed to be going quite well until we got out of Adelaide and problems started.  The car kept shuddering when it accelerated at high speeds. We were approaching the heat of the day and the car was struggling with overheating.  We hadn’t had a problem with overheating before now as the Bellarine Peninsular was pretty cold and driving through the night we couldn’t keep warm it was so cold.

We stopped a number of times along the way trying multiple strategies to cool the car down. We changed the coolant, we wired the fan to be on all the time, we wired the A/C fan to cool it down but nothing worked and the car continued to shudder and overheat.  We had to continuously turn the car off and on again to bring it back to speed.  We were all starting to get really tired having been swapping driving shifts and only sleeping in the back of the car and the problems were started to wear us out.

While trying to fix the car under a tree at one of the very few roadhouses a guy came over and tried to help us out but not much else came of it.  We got back on the road driving and had to stop again to try and fix it again.  One of the cars that stopped to see if we were okay happened to be this guy who lived in Coober Pedy which was about 150km down the road.  He and his friend offered to drive us in convoy in case anything should happen to the car then they could tow us.  It was really nice of them and good to know that if we were to break down then someone would be there.  But we made it to Coober Pedy and said our ‘Thank Yous’ and ‘Goodbyes’.

We were so tired by now that to cheer ourselves up we bought some hot food at the only place in town which seemed open and started again on the 7 hour drive from there up to Alice Springs.  By this time the sun was going down and the heat of the day faded away and the car seemed to be going well so I cracked on trying to get as close to Alice as we could.  We stopped at the South Australia/Northern Territory border for a quick photo and driver change and pushed on through finally making it to Alice Springs at 3.30am, 29 hours after leaving Melbourne.  We all crawled into bed exhausted.

Day Twenty-Seven – Ocean Grove to Adelaide – Crazy Ideas and Goodbyes

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After the major sunburning of 2014 yesterday, most of the day was spent inside trying not to make the burns worse.  We had to leave the house the next day so we started packing up and eating up all the left over food.  It started getting quite sad cause this would the last time I would see any of my family for a long time. Matthew and Emily would be heading back to Townsville, my Mum and Dad would be doing their tour of Australia before heading back to TCI and Ed and Angie would be driving back to Alice Springs while I would spend New Year’s Eve alone in Melbourne at a hostel.

I made a comment that if i knew Ed and Angie were driving back I would have gone with them and it made me think, “why don’t I?’.  So I looked up the cost of changing my flights and buying one from Alice Springs down to Melbourne and though a little pricey I kind of thought, why not? Why should we save our money in the bank and if you work hard for it then you should spend it on something you want to do.  So around 11pm I packed my stuff into their car, said goodbye to my parents and Matthew and Emily and we set off on the 22 hour drive from Melbourne to Alice Springs.

Day Twenty-One – Melbourne – Inmigración y Tapas

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The day was spent split up into two groups for most of the day and it proved a lot easier to navigate and organise smaller groups of adults.

Since arriving in Melbourne, I really wanted to check out the Immigration Museum so I pitched the idea to the others and my Mum, Dad, Ed and Angie decided to join me there. Matthew and Emily decided instead to go to the Jean Paul Gaultier exhibition. I’m so glad I went, it posed some really interesting ideas about migration, most I had thought about before but some new ideas were opened up to me which I hope to write about soon after my travels take a break.

We spent a good amount of time in the museum before catching the tram down to the docklands to do some last minute present shopping.  The more time I spend in Melbourne the more I think it’s similar to London.  It has a Southbank with the artsy areas and theatres and galleries.  It has small hipsters lanes, a dockland area etc.  I can see why so many people from the UK say the would move here if they moved to Australia.  Personally, I’m not too much of a fan, I think I prefer to go somewhere smaller.

After shopping Ed and Angie had to leave us to go get ready to meet their friends Sophie and Robbie.  Because we had some spare time my Mum, Dad and I went to the James Squire Brewery by the Yarra in the Docklands.  We then went back to the hotel to freshen up, meet Matthew and Emily and get ready for dinner. By this time we were all feeling pretty exhausted and not too thrilled for dinner but we went anyway because you have to keep going when you’re travelling.  There’s no point in wasting time, you have to see as much as you can.

While Ed and Angie went to meet Sophie and Robbie for Teppanyaki, the rest of us went for a meal at Bomba an amazing Spanish Tapas place.  $45 for a 9 course tasting menu, definitely worth it and a definite recommendation. The meal was so amazing it woke us all up from the excitement. After the meal we headed upstairs to Bomba’s rooftop bar to meet Ed, Angie, Robbie and Sophie and have a couple of cocktails.  They had a really cool selection of prohibition style cocktails and I had one of the best Gin and Tonics I have ever experienced.  We headed back to the hotel feeling full, happy and tired and we all slept well.