Great Ocean Road - Day 1 Adelaide to Robe

Despite having felt so dreadful last night and having barely an hour or so sleep, I felt surprisingly bright this morning and well capable to doing the long drive, which is just as well as Ian wasn’t too good at all.  It’s amazing how we subconsciously take it in turns.

Breakfast was included in the room rate and the lovely lady on the egg station cooked me two fried yokes just how I like them and poached for Ian.  Suitably fortified we met David (the chauffeur) at 08:30 as arranged and he drove us to Hertz Rental in North Terrace to pick up the car.  It’s a very nice Mitsubishi ASK automatic, similar in size to our Qashqai at home.  We quickly completed the paperwork and would have hit the road, except the phone SIM still hadn’t activated.

We left all our bags safely locked in the car in the Hertz compound and hung around until the Telstra shop opened at 09:00 where the technician refused to deal with us as we didn’t have our passports with us (in the car).  I had a complete meltdown and pointed out that the two guys who’d served us yesterday were sitting in the corner and could no doubt vouch for who we were.  A lot of teeth sucking and checking with the manager went on, but eventually they agreed to deal with us, although declared the problem was a known network issue and we’d need to speak with Telstra over the phone.  There then followed a ludicrous half hour where the guys in the shop told us what to say to the person on the phone and the person on the phone told us what to say to the shop staff - they were not allowed to talk directly on our behalf, even though I offered to adopt one of them.  The phone side insisted it was a corrupt SIM and the shop insisted it was a network problem.  I explained I was a visitor in their country, wholly reliant upon them and about to drive through a fire danger area and therefore would NOT leave the shop until I had a working phone.  Eventually someone tried a new SIM and guess what – it worked!!!

Rather cross at the wasted hour but relieved to have a working phone we headed off to Robe for our first night.  About 335 kms away and a 4 hour drive without stops.  But the first stop was the Pink Lake at Meningie, although not particularly pink on a grey day like today.

I loved the non specific nature of this sign "Caution  ←Cable in this Vicinity →"

We then drove on and into the little town of Meningie and stopped at the bakery which is famous for its pies.  All we wanted again though was a simple sandwich; cheese salad made to order and luckily we were able to stop her before she added in gerkins, onions and beetroot.  We sat next to Lake Albert and ate the lunch which was lovely, all the while watching the Little Corellas.

Suddenly an egret shot out of the reeds, but b*gger I clipped his tail.

White birds against a flat white sky - not an ideal combination!

A few miles out of town we came across another lake and this time it was vaguely pink.

Next stop was in Kingston for the famous Big Lobster - immortalised in Bill Bryson's Down Under.  We're driving more or less the same route as he did.

Built in 1979 it stands almost 60ft high and is made of fibreglass over a steel frame - very impressive too.  This time the red arrow points to Ian, not a kangaroo, included for scale.

The soil in this region is very lime rich (just like the Boxley Valley) and there are numerous wine growers in the area.  Whereas in France you go to "caves" to taste/buy wine, here they are described as cellar doors.  We visited the Cape Jaffa cellar door where Ian tasted 6 wines (I had just the one small tasting as I was driving) and then we bought 6 bottles of the one he liked best.

Unfortunately it wasn't possible to walk around the vineyards or the production areas, so very little to photograph.

Adelaide

Adelaide (named after William IV's consort) is of course the capital of South Australia which has the boast of being the only state not founded by convicts.  SA is about 7.5 x the size of the UK and about 83% of its 1.7m people live in the capital region.  In fact it's second largest city, Mount Gambier, has a mere 30,000 inhabitants. 

Adelaide is gorgeous; full of parks and green spaces and the River Torrens running through the centre helps make for a really beautiful city with so many areas for people to relax and enjoy themselves.

Not sure what this little shrimp was doing out of the water - dying probably.

Adelaide Oval 

Don Bradman

The old parliament building.

The fusion of old and new buildings works quite well.

This fairly new building, known as The Cheese Grater houses SA's Medical Research and Science Centre.

Graffiti, the same the world over.

After a couple of hours wandering around we were hungry and looked around for a sandwich (neither of us having much appetite for food).  You could buy food from practically any nation, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, Chinese, Greek, Arabic - you name it but nowhere could we find a simple sandwich.  So we headed for Tourist Information and they suggested a food hall which provided us with the something edible although not the nicest we've had.  We then caught the free tram back to near our hotel so that we could check in.  The plan was then to catch another tram to the coastal area of Glenelg but that never quite happened as I fell asleep almost as soon as we got in our room.

Ian woke me around 18:00 and we went up to the Skyline bar, he was hungry and decided on a pizza and a glass of wine but I just ordered a bowl of chips and water.  Strangely Mayonnaise seems to be known universally here as alioli, which to us means garlic mayonnaise, but there is no hint of garlic. We were just at the right time to enjoy the setting sun over the Adelaide Hills - I'd not taken my camera so just a phone snap.

Remember the "you call that a knife - this is a knife" scene from Crocodile Dundee

I still feel shattered so hopefully I might sleep tonight.

Fortunate Timing

The train ride from Perth to Adelaide is described as 3 days and 2 nights which is absolutely correct, only the 3rd day is a very short one as we arrived and disembarked in Adelaide at 07:20

We’d had another dreadful night so were awake well before dawn and more than ready for our fruit platter which was duly delivered.

Having got off with our hand luggage we then had quite a long wait for the suitcases to be returned.  We'd planned all along to make the short 1km walk to our Rydges Hotel instead of bothering with a taxi (we thought we'd be ready for a walk after 2 days on a train).  When the cases finally arrived we double checked our route and were given completely opposite directions.  We headed off but were struggling to find a path (didn't want to push cases in the road) and about to give up and go back to the long taxi queue, when Ian suddenly spotted a minibus with our hotel's name on it.  He walked over to ask for directions whereupon the driver promptly offered us a lift.  We just thought he (David) was just being incredibly kind but it turns out the hotel offer a complimentary shuttle service within the CBD (central business district of Adelaide).  So we were whisked to the hotel to drop our cases (far too early to check in) and then David drove us to the shopping area and to a pharmacy so we could stock up on cough remedies.  He also booked us in his diary for tomorrow to take us to collect the hire car.

What fortunate timing (for once!)

We found an extremely helpful pharmacist who suggested all kind of pills and potions and we readily said yes to anything she thought might help.  From there we went to a mobile phone shop to buy a 30 day SIM card so we could a) keep in touch with Toby, b) monitor the fire situation and c) have Sat-Nav directions for our 4 day road trip.  It was a fairly long winded process but one of the trainee salesmen was from Liverpool and we had a good chat whilst waiting for the SIM to activate.  It didn't, but apparently it can take up to 24 hours so he was confident all would be working before we departed Adelaide tomorrow.

Indian Pacific 3

Our plans for a couple of hours more sleep were thwarted when shortly after leaving Rawlinna it was announced that the clocks were going forward 2 1/2 hours, whereas at the briefing we were told this would happen around mid-afternoon.   Another irritating mis-communication, albeit minor, but because we'd had the bacon rolls at Rawlinna, a kind of brunch was being served between 11:30 and 14:30 and in a stroke it was suddenly time to eat again.

The next few hours were spent crossing the Nullarbor Plain.  The Nullarbor (Latin for No Trees) is part of the flat, almost treeless, arid area of southern Australia and is the world's largest single expanse of limestone bedrock.  At its widest point, it stretches about 1,100 kilometres from west to east across the border between Western and South Australia.

The railway line has the longest straight section of railway in the world (478 km without the slightest hint of a bend) and, should you be mad enough to drive it, the Eyre Highway contains the longest straight section of tarred road in Australia (146 km).

As you would imagine, the scenery wasn't particularly spectacular.

But we did spot a few (out of focus) kangaroos.

Although neither of us were feeling hungry we made our way along to the dining car and did our best to enjoy the food.

Around 15:00 we arrived at Cook, once a thriving Nullarbor town with about 200 residents, its own hospital, school, shops and even a golf course.  With the privatisation of the railways in 1997 the town was effectively closed and today Cook has a permanent population of 4 and serves solely as a refuelling station for the Indian Pacific.

This is us to a tee (in more than one sense of the word).

Alongside the railway line are the historic jail cells, essentially two very small corrugated iron sheds built to house criminals found wandering around on the Nullarbor and held there until the next train came along.  The cells are matching "his" and "hers" complete with bars, padlocks and their own jailhouse rock!

Once the Main Street.  

This couple live here 2 weeks on/two weeks off (got to be slightly bonkers)

The refuelling containers.

It was blisteringly hot and even with hats and a supply of water we struggled to move too fast or too far, so before long we headed back to the relative cool of the cabin.

We elected for an early dinner and for the first time we were sat with another couple (we knew dining was in fours but up to now our coughing and spluttering has ensured we've dined alone, or were there "unclean" signs hanging on our backs?)  Our fellow diners were from Switzerland and spoke very good English, father and daughter spending 5 weeks travelling together before she met up with her boyfriend to continue her travels.  Unfortunately Ian and I both felt so rough, we could barely converse with them.

We skipped the starters and both chose roast chicken breast for mains, sadly when it arrived I took one look at it and knew I wouldn't be able to eat it.  It was HUGE and there is not a chicken on this planet able to produce a breast of that size so we can only assume it was somehow reformed/reshaped out of several pieces and shoved into netting, rather like a gammon joint (you could even see the netting marks).  Not being a meat lover in the first place I was intimidated by the sheer size of it and the lack of vegetables.  I gave it back to the waitress and tried to explain that it was nothing to do with the food (it was) just me being fussy - Ian tried to eat his and could barely get his knife through it was so tough.  We made our apologies to the Swiss and slipped.

On the way back through the lounge carriage Ian bumped into Damian who was the co-ordinator for our set of carriages and explained we still weren't feeling well.  He very kindly offered to find us something else to eat and ended up making us cheese and tomato sandwiches which he personally delivered to our cabin.  He said he'd also arrange for a breakfast fruit platter to be bought to us at 06:30 the following morning to save us having to go to the dining carriage.  Very kind and the sandwich was delicious.

Indian Pacific 2

Unfortunately we had an abysmal night; we took it in turns to cough and splutter and in the few brief moments when neither of us was coughing, the jolting of the train ensured we got no sleep at all.

We were scheduled to stop at Rawlinna, a remote siding on the edge of a 2.5m acre sheep station (70,000 sheep) at 06:30 so we accepted the offer of a wake up knock at 05:45 but set our alarms just in case.  Good job too as no knock happened (another mis-communication between staff, like the coaches last night!).  But one positive of not sleeping is that you don't have to worry about not being awake for things.  So we were up, had had a hot drink (water back on!), had showered and were ready to get off.
I think the stop was essential to deliver supplies to the station and maybe take on water before we crossed the famous Nullabor Plain, but it also gave the Indian Pacific an opportunity to pretend it was something of interest.  A few random pictures

Definitely a one horse town

Hot bacon and egg rolls were handed out, together with orange juice or tea/coffee and some strange buns which I thought were cinnamon but apparently were vegemite flavoured!!

I think this is the same guy who was on the platform at Perth - he goes from carriage to carriage each evening, but we've not heard him yet.

And a couple of arty-farty shots (I'd seen one similar to this first one when the sun was just peaking over the rail and it looked brilliant - unfortunately we were well after sunrise when we stopped).

I'm guessing this is kangaroo spine although I'm not sure what predates on them in this area - dingo, I guess but do they kill or just eat carrion.

At about 09:00 we were back on the train and returned to our cabin to discover the beds had already been unmade.  Another miscommunication - we were told at our embarkation briefing that it was important to hang a sign on the door when we left the carriage (for meals etc) and wanted the beds made up.  So we presumed if we didn't leave the sign, nothing would be touched!

We managed to get the top bunk down and both tried for a couple more hours sleep.