Merry Christmas, Great Ocean Road, Kangaroo Island

Merry Christmas Everyone!

We had a wonderful warm Christmas day here in Adelaide, luckily the heat of yesterday (38) did not repeat and we had a comfortable albeit rain cloud afternoon of only 28. We threw on some Santa hats and hit up the beach, played by the pool and took in a lavish Christmas dinner here at the Hilton hotel.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday time. To help get us into the holiday spirit we went tobogganing recently! Yes tobogganing, just this time it was in a sand dune on Kangaroo Island called little Sahara! The only gotcha with sand tobogganing is sand does get everywhere! Danielle won longest ride, but I won best wipe out. I think I also took silver and bronze in wipe outs, I perhaps over waxed my board each time and choose the really steep paths =). This also means I had the most sand in places you don't care to know, it took seemingly days to remove all the sand.

So we took the path from Sydney through the Snowy Mountains right through Melbourne and onto the Great Ocean Road! The GOR was everything one could hope for, we got to see the birth place of many of the surfing icons such as Rip Curl at Bells Beach, although its summer and there was no major swells and no real surfing going on unfortunately.

We proceeded along the beautiful road onto a scenic waterfall for lunch, from there we stopped at a Koala hot spot, saw a wild Koala hanging out and then had some human habituated birds land on our arms and heads, I managed to get a trifecta, three birds at once ! =)

From there we stopped just short of the 12 Apostles at a little camping ground, then proceeded near dusk to the 12 Apostles where we cooked dinner and waited for a very picturesque sunset.

The next day was action packed, rest of the great ocean road with many more great scenic stops, plus chocolate makers, cheese makers and a winery! We also stopped along the route to see some white kangaroo's.

We made our way to Kangaroo Island a short 45 minute ferry ride over from the mainland. The island is renowned for its scenery as well and abundant wild life. We had to fend off a kangaroo scratching at the camper door while we ate dinner. Danielle had to shoo away a wallaby from peaking under her shower door. I had a raccoon like animal walking around the rafters during my shower! All the while koala's in the trees around the camper! There was seemingly nearly a 100 roo's/wallabies around the camp at dusk and then but 2 or 3 come morning.

We proceeded to a pelican feeding that a local gentlemen does every day at 5pm, wow those guys are huge and were rubbing up against you as the chaos for food ensued!

We also set out on a penguin watching evening stroll, the local penguin center is closed due to low season for successful viewings but out campground was right across the street and the staff offered us hope we might still see one or two. We had to cover our torches with red cellophane to ensure the penguins no discomfort and down to the beach we went. We sat in the dark watching the stars for an hour before giving up, as we walked back I found two sets of tracks of penguins whom came ashore a bit off of where we expected them to come up =( So we came close but did not see any penguins thus far, but did get lots of star gazing time at the southern cross.

Kangaroo Island finished with only one animal fatality, despite missing a echidna, two lizards and two wallabies a third lizard made its way under the tires in a loud thumb. The lizards here are pretty good size, unfortunately I just didn't notice him in time, Danielle still a proclaims I am a meanie and there was avoidance time if I had just veered onto the on coming lane.
We have now finished phased 2 of our adventure, the driving camper van adventure. We are now in Adelaide for Christmas after driving nearly 6K km in 18 days. Next up the Great White Shark dive on the 27th.

Dan and Danielle