SA.

To blog, or not to blog. That has been a question on my lips over the last few days.

I decided to at least try to keep [begin again] doing it.
At least to keep some kind of loose record of what the flip we're actually doing with ourselves :)



So- we hit the road, jack.
After a MARVELOUS time in Melbourne, we decided that we better get going before we got stuck. H made many wonderful, friendly and intelligent friends, countless coffees and wrote a thousand impossible words a day of pure brilliance and fantasy, while I ate lots of bread, and read lots of books, and watched lots of movies and wrote a few songs.

We even took a few day trips to Wombat State Forest (didn't see any wombats) and Phillip Island (didn't see any penguins).




H being manly and clearing the road for The Haryana Express.

It was lovely to spend time with my sister, who's house we lived out of. And to get to know Johnno, who's books we read and music we listened to. It was sad to leave our little yarra-village… but better than looking back in 4 years and realising that we never finished our Aus Road Trip.

Really, we've barely started.



As you can see here. I was almost embarrassed to put this up… we have travelled, like, less than 1% of the country. But everything has a beginning, and this is ours.

I would love to tell you ALL about our time in Melbourne, but… I'll save that for face to face time with you. Until then, rest assured we had a great time, got to know great people, were a part of great things. All things great.

But now. Wow. Being back on the road is magical. I cannot begin to compare the difference between here and there. Nature verses City. Birds noises verses Trucks braking. Working verses Relaxing. Pollution verses Sea breeze. Really, you can just imagine. Go on, do it.


We left Melbourne on Wednesday morning, after: 2 work party's for H; a night of doing a Disney Princess Puzzle at Nel's and; leaving a Chalk note in the carport.

We left with BIG smiles on our faces.
Headed straight down to the Great Ocean Road and stopped everywhere to walk everywhere and gawk at beautiful coastline. We drove for hours along the coast, snuggling up next to km's of lush, green countryside on our right, beeping the car horn at the millions of sheep along the way.
The sun was shining, cardigans were left in the car and H even drove shirtless for a while!! Summer was in the air. (and we didn't take any digital photos, so I have no proof of this glorious day)

We had dinner overlooking the last of the breathtaking "great ocean road" and drove on towards an unknown Mountain Range in the distance.
When that Mountain Range turned out to be some angry looking clouds we decided to turn off at Warrnambool. We set up camp along side a little river that we almost drove into. It was dark, very cloudy, and someone decided to put the No Through Road sign IN LINE with where the road became covered in river (boat ramp). Clever chap. We weren't sure what this body of water was, but after sleeping for a sweet 12 hours we woke up to discover how beautiful a place it was.

Sneaky side note: I woke to the sound of a nervous looking woman dumping her recycling into the public rubbish bin… Really, everyone does that, right? I wanted to tell her to chill out and stop glancing around all sweaty and worried. But didn't want her to know I'd seen :)

From here we went on to watch whales laze around in the ocean and study birds flitting about in the wind.

The we put on the same clothes we wore the day before, Click Clacked, Front and Back, and drove on into the day.






Stopping at Port Fairy where all manner of fantasy creatures enter our Great South Land from the Mystical Islands Beyond.







Stopping at Mt Gambia, where their buildings look like Ginger Bread Houses, where we took photo's of a tree and looked at their breathtaking volcano lake.





We drove for hours past countless Wind Turbine Thingy's, through endless forests of Christmas Trees, right along the coast to Robe, a little Seaport town in SA.






Here we are staying for a night or two with a very new friend Lauren who is all generosity and knowledge and friendly bubbles. We met her in Melbourne one weekend and were dazzled. She is kindly letting us lounge in her house, sit by her fire, eat her marvellous meals and drink her lovely coffees.

She is a Coffee Roaster for http://www.mahaliacoffee.com.au/ and invited us to do a "cupping session" in their warehouse today. It's where you smell a whole bunch of different coffee grinds and muse on what aroma's you can find in each one. Then you make it up with hot water and smell them all again. Then you slurp a bit of each of them into your mouth (you've seriously got to SLURP) and spit it back out into a cup. All the while continually musing on what they smell and taste like.

It's probably much more detailed than that, with a lot of brains behind it, and very important to the coffee roasting trade. But for me… I found that all coffee currently smells the same… :)

Here we have explored the coastline a little, perused the shelves of their bookstore/cafe, crept into their old fashioned little church, made salad sandwiches and relaxed a little. WIth time enough to bore you with our recent travels…

And there's more...