Grampians, The Great Ocean Road, Gisbourne and Wilson's Prom

The Grampians, what a wonderful place! The views are spectacular. We stayed in Halls Gap, a little town with a whole lot of accommodation! The Halls Gap Caravan Park was one of the cheapest sites we have had so far, and one of the nicest. Mountains surround you with lots of green grass and a great playground with lots of little shops to potter around when you are done walking the mountains. This was Jasmine's first chance to take her brand new shoes for a test run, she was dying to find some slippery rocks to test them out on, no matter how high of the ground they were! Jasmine has this thing where she loves to do exercises (Can't imagine where she gets that from - I don't do much in the fitness way of things!), She finds a great place and she feels compelled to stretch! Of course Jemma can't be left out and always copies! Here they found a helipad on the top of a mountain and amused many passers by with their exercise!

The walks through the Grampians were well marked and thankfully had plenty of rails to stop my monkeys going too far. One of the things I have noticed the most with Jemma is that at her height she often can't see much through the railings so we now make sure we pick her up and show her the world at our height. This was highlighted by the photos she kept taking with bars in them!

While in the Grampians I decided to give Jasmine's fringe a cut. I always get scared as her curls around her face make it difficult to cut evenly. Greg thought it would be easy so while I had a shower he decided to lop the fringe himself - he now knows it isn't that easy, his comment was "how long will it take to grow out??" Poor Jas, she doesn't mind though she loves to get the water onto her fringe and style it in different ways everytime she goes to the toilet, lucky!

From the Grampians we travelled to Warrnambool and the start of the Great Ocean Road. If you have never travelled this drive it is a must see. Photographs just don't do the scenery justice (well mine don't anyway). You travel with sea and amazing cliffs on one side and rolling green hills on the other. The girls were having a great time spotting the different cattle and animals out their windows. We did have a bit of a laugh at this sign, I was going to make a Victorian joke here but they have been such lovely people I don't think I should!

We stayed at Port Campbell Holiday Park for the evening where we enjoyed seeing the news for the first time in a long time on the common room tv. We caught up on a little work in there only to have a big storm hit and the lights flicker for a bit. What we didn't realise is that it did something to my laptop which is no longer working. I think we fried the thing and I am too scared to do anything incase I make it worse so now we are down to one laptop (sharing isn't a good thing when you have so much work between two adults!) On a good note, the weather fined up and we visited the beach at Port Campbell, had lunch and headed along the Great Ocean Road again. There is so much history along this coastline and plenty of little lookouts you stop at to really appreciate the incredible scenery. There are little signs at each the explain what you are looking at and Jasmine never misses any of them. (that is Greg having fun near the boat launch with Port Campbell beach in the background)

Yes we stopped at the 12 Apostles and yes it was even better than the photos you see. It was terribly windy and a sudden storn came over while we were at the lookout which froze us all but made for some great shots! The cliffs and beaches were stunning as were the rock formations. We were half hoping one might fall down while we were there, just so we could get a shot! Very selfish I know!!

We have seen some wonderful wildlife on our trip, kangaroos galore at the Grampians, Emu's at the Flinders Ranges, Dingo at the Bungles and plenty of birdlife. Nothing quite beats seeing koalas in the wild however, like this guy we spotted on the drive out to Cape Otway lighthouse (which was closed but the koalas made it all worthwhile!) We were driving along wondering why there were people stopping on the side of the road everywhere. We told Jas to watch out for koalas thinking that might be the reason and 30 seconds later she was screaming with excitement. We pulled over and walked up the road to be greeted by about 5 koalas in so many trees. On the drive back we found this guy only about 2-3m from the ground and right beside the road. The girls were thrilled, they thought it was certainly so much better than seeing them in a zoo.

The only thing left on the list to see was the wombats...

After a quick overnight stop at Apollo Bay we hit the road again heading for Bells Beach. Greg wanted to get some surfing shots and what better place. I don't think I have had to walk down so many steps to get to a beach in my life! It was a really nice beach and I enjoyed letting the girls have a bit of a run and play around on the sand however the surf was way too dangerous to let them near the water. The waves broke very close to the beach and the depth dropped right off really quickly, Jasmine lost her footing very easily while trying to catch water for her sand castle at the edge and was immediately up to her thighs in water (she started being right out of the water) Thankfully she got a bit of a scare and didn't go near the edge again. Great for surfers though and there wasn't any shortage of those!

From Bells we travelled to Gisbourne to catch up with some friends with a new little baby girl. Ty and Alex and baby Lilly helped us to celebrate Greg's 34th birthday. Jemma just wanted to play with Lilly's toes and loved saying her name! The following day we packed up camp and decided to brave the city of Melbourne, camper trailer and all! We still can not work out how to turn right from the left lane and managed to go round in circles until we found a street where we didn't have to. We apologise right now to anyone who was driving around us as we tried to navigate our way through the city and out to Docklands! We eventually made it safely and went for a walk on the docks. Sadly we found the area very pretentious, often I was looked down on for my sensible camping outfit and I think our girls were just a little too outgoing (not to mention not dressed in name brands) for the likes of the people in the area. Needless to say our stay was a short one! We decided to go out to Dandenong to visit my Great Aunt Janet's old house where I have many memories of spending Christmas and January sales!!

AJ, your house hasn't changed, the white gates are still there as are your wonderful citrus trees by the driveway. I know you will be reading this! The shops are much the same with the markets now being taken over by Aldi and an undercover parking area built beside where the markets are now held (I assume, it was hard to make it all out the area is so large now!) It was lovely to go back, there are so many memories of your house and the markets (and shops!!)

I have to apologise, that got a whole lot longer than I expected! I do have one little story I have to leave you with, I promised Dad I would post it. Remember we hadn't seen any wombats, well that was until we reached Wilson's Promontory where we are now. Jas spotted one as soon as she got out of the car. Last night we were told to brace for gale force winds with weather warnings for the Prom. In the dark Greg and I were trying to peg and pole the camper down, Greg hit the peg into the ground turned around to get the rope and lost where he put the peg. I remarked that most people would do this job with a torch so Greg called to Jas to find the WAECO torch. I suddely saw something move under the trailer and backed away telling Greg who realised it was a wombat and also backed away (there are signs up asking you to report any wombat agression so we wern't taking chances!)as he backed away from the trailer towards the car he realised there was another one under the car. This one came out and headed for the tent door, just as Jas found the torch and opened the zip to hand it to Greg. We both shouted at her to shut the door which she thankfully did very quickly and scared the wombat back under the car.

Meanwhile the big one under the trailer decided to come out and head for me, not knowing where the other wombat was I had no where to go but the bullbar of the front of the car so up I jumped as quickly as I could. The big wombat ran right under me and took off into the darkness but I wasn't getting down till Greg got the torch and made sure there wasn't one waiting for me under the car! He didn't realise where I was until he got the torch and then nearly died laughing. The two of us were smiling for a long time after that.

We made it through the gale force winds that were close to 90kms/hour last night, we also had torrential rain and hail and the 3 Dog Camper took it all in its stride! We are told the weather is fining up now so we might be able to get you all some great shots on the gallery soon.

I leave you with Jemma's new found love, herself - she spent the whol lunchtime looking at herself in the serviette holder and making faces. Again, she kept everyone around amused too. I'm glad our girls bring so much laughter to the world!!