Firework farewell and onwards to Adelaide

I spent the last day in Melbourne enjoying the the Moomba festival - I may have mentioned that thw festival had everything from waterskiing events to new Australian music and a firework display each evening. The fireworks were fantastic, they were let off on barges along the river bank, so they were shown against the Melbourne sky-line. Each rocket and fountain was timed perfectly to a version of Beethovans Moonlight sonata (cheesy but still one of my favourites) played on flamenco guitar with a didgeridoo accompaniment (surprisingly worked very well). Definately a highlight to leave Melbourne with!

The next day we left for the Great Ocean Road, the road was built to improve tourism access to the coastline and was planned before the first world war. The construction was put off until after the war primerily to provide jobs for soldiers returning from the battlefields. The road travels through some amazing scenery on the surfers coastline and then through to the shipwreck coastline, winding up over hills and along the beach. There were lots of motorcyclists and bicycles which looked like an amazing way to do the route. We spent the first day visitng beaches along teh surfers coast and the second day along teh shipwreck coast taking in famous sights such as the 12 apostles, loch ard gorge and a great blast from the past the light house from the childrens TV series "round the twist"!

Aside from the fantastic scenery we also saw loads of wildlife. Including lots of Koala bears, kangaroos and a fur seal.



I also heard and saw the Koala bears mating - which is possibly the most disturbing thing I have witnessed for a long time.

It starts with the males letting out a growl which sounds cross between a donkey braying and what I imagine a grizzly sounds like (surprisingly loud and scary sounding for such a small fluffy creature!) The females then reply with what sounds like a babies cry (the sort that makes everyone in the room cringe and shiver with worry). The male koala then walks along and climbs the females tree each of them calling out all the time (Koalas are not fast movers so this can take some time - and the one I was watching fell asleep in the middle...) Upon reaching teh female the male bear starts scratching biting and pulling the female from the tree (her screeming all the way down - according to the ranger this is a sign of pleasure but it sounded and looked much more menaching!) Once on the ground the couple I was watching then fell asleep for 30 mins before starting up again - All this while I was trying to sleep (the dangers of camping in the woods i presume)

I the evening we also took a walk round the temperate rainforest north of Apollo bay, including seeing teh glow in the dark fungus and glow worms - really quite cool (the photo of them is not so exciting though, it looks like i've just drawn a green line on a black piece of paper).

I arrived in Adelaide this morning at 6:30am SA time and did my washing while waiting for sunrise to explore the city. Its the Adelaide fringe festival at the mo, so there were lodas of buskers on the streets and tonight i'm going to see the didgeridoo man perform at the pub opposite the hostel (Oxford people will recognise this guy as the man who busks on Cornmarket street every summer with the didge and the tambula). Adelaids streets are strangely pretty as one of the few cities in Australia where the founders built in stone rather than wood - everything has a colonial feel.

i have one more day in Adelaide then off to the Blue Mountains for my WWOOFing post. I'll probably stay there for a week before heading back into Sydney for my last week in Australia.