melbourne supremacy

It appears as though I have emerged defeated in my battle to upload pictures on the Australian wifi. My best hope now is to wait until I'm in New Zealand, and edit these entries then. For now, we resume our adventure with my last full day in Melbourne...

...which now has the pictures to match it.

I woke up at a reasonable hour on my last full day in Melbourne, and hastily inhaled breakfast. Packing a picnic lunch of peanut butter & jelly sandwiches and apples, Seka and I arrived at our first car rental agency by ten o'clock. Unfortunately the only thing the agency had to offer us was a rather impressive bucket of Jelly Bellies, as there were no cars with automatic transmission available.

Our next stop was a somewhat more run-of-the-mill rental agency, on par with Avis or Hertz. They had a 5-speed automatic available, but the $98/day rental cost was a little hard to swallow. Instead, we decided to check out one final privately-owned rental agency, hoping to find a better deal. When we walked into the office, Seka appeared to be immediately sold on the place because of the profusion of Elvis paraphernalia littering the room. For my part, the MG-F parked in the lot had endeared me to the place, and when we spoke to the representative, it seemed like this agency would give us the best deal.

I filled out the appropriate paperwork, and wasting as little time as possible, Seka and I climbed into our white two-door Hyundai and hit the road. Driving on the other side of the road isn't all that difficult, the hardest part about it is knowing how to make turns. Driving on the other side of the car, on the other hand, turns out to be a bit tricky. For me, the hardest part about driving was always knowing where I was on the road. After the better part of seven years, however, I've gotten used to the view from the driver's seat, and so to have that seat shifted to the other side of the car meant that I was constantly fighting the impulse to drift left. Before I go on, I'll ruin part of the story to reveal that Seka and I returned the car without a scratch on it, or any other person or vehicle it came into contact with, though at times it seemed like we were trying our darnest to keep from this blemish-free condition.

Our car had a certain retard dolphin-esque quality, but we loved it.

Following directions given to us by the staff at our hostel, the two of us headed out into the countryside. The rolling fields of grain and exotic trees made for a gorgeous landscape, but it was our first ocean siting that really sold the deal on all the hassle of renting the car. I drove until I ran out of road - which, because I turned down a dead end road, took very little time - and we parked the car and strolled along the beach.

The coast.

Welcome to my Levi's commercial.

When we returned to the car, Seka expressed an interest in checking out a fish & chips restaurant in town, and so, handing over the wheel, be backtracked to the small main street of the coastal hamlet. We placed two orders for the poster meal, as well as two "scoops" of scallops. The fish & chips procured, I suggested taking our meal outside. We found a picnic table in a coast-side park, and there we dug into our meal. The scallops, which rather than scoops were just two individual servings, were particularly peculiar, as they had some growth attached to them. I expect that this growth is a normal feature on scallops, but it is traditionally removed. Such removal is, in my mind, entirely appropriate as according to Seka it's pretty gross. After finishing our meal, the two of us monkeyed around on the playground, and took turns climbing trees for dramatic arboreal poses. Having exhausted the amenities of the park, we climbed back into our little white car and drove off to find the Great Ocean Road.

Seka finds skipping rocks and seashells along the beach.

It took a few laps around the round-a-bout, and a stop by the tourist information center, but we finally managed to figure out that we had been on the Great Ocean Road all along, albeit a rather poorly marked section. Before long, we were cruising along a gorgeous stretch of road, tracing the coastline of southern Australia. Through quite villages, populated by vacation homes and fishing shacks, and winding roads cut into the sheer rock face that plunges into the frothy sea, we drove along in our little white car, chatting as we went. The weather was absolutely perfect, and we made several stops along the way to take advantage of the scenery.

Steps up from the beach.

Our next major stop was a turn-off to a waterfall. Hiking a kilometer into the bush, Seka made me face my waterfall fears [read "Diary of a Brave Mountain Explorer" if you've lost the reference] and together we explored around the area. The area was rife with eucalyptus trees, and as my lifelong image of eucalyptus trees requires that there be a conjoined koala, I was rather disappointed that through the entire walk, we didn't see any of these icons of Australia. When we returned to the car, Seka graciously relinquished the wheel, and I had the chance to negotiate the coastal rode. Two minutes into the ride, our koala fortunes reversed when we came reasonably close to hitting one with the car. Koalas are loved for their lovable stuffed animal-esque appearance and their docile nature. However, our koala was not exactly lovable, in as much as it was... well, ugly. If you can combine whatever preformed symbolic koala complex you're holding onto with a the image of a late career Elvis Presley, then you've basically got the picture of the chubby bugger gazing back at us with a languid apathy for its near vehicular slaughter. But never mind that, because it was still a koala! A real live, out-of-the-wild koala, which more than anything else I had yet experienced screamed "I'm in Australia" to me.

Falling water.

This picture makes the koala look deceivingly cute.

Making our way around the koala, Seka and I continued to make our way down the road until we came to Apollo Bay, the southernmost point in... my travels (okay, it wasn't the southernmost point in Australia, that was a little farther down the road, but we didn't know that at the time, and I had a hankering to make it back to a lighthouse we had passed earlier in time for sunset). Which is exactly what we did. The suggested speed limit for the Great Ocean Road (one of the many excellent qualities of Australia is that they only suggest a speed here) was 80 kilometers an hour, but the good people at the department of transportation quickly realized that if a motorist was to take any of the countless turns on the Great Ocean Road at 80 kilometers an hour, then they would go flying off into the South Pacific most likely damaging the unique flora and fauna on the way to a fiery crash. The koalas certainly won't get out of the way in a hurry. So every few meters we would alternate between signs reminding you that the suggested speed was 80 and signs warning that taking the turns at more than 40 would most likely result in the aforementioned fiery crash.

Despite the mixed messages I was getting from the boys at the DoT, Seka and I made it to the lighthouse for our last scheduled stop along the Great Ocean Road. After taking in the sights, we climbed back into our car, Seka driving, and we headed off Melbourne-bound. As the light began to fail, we sped along, leaving the Great Ocean Road for the connecting roads to Melbourne. At least, that's what we thought we were doing. Distracted by conversation, Seka and I quickly found ourselves in the middle of the suburbs, with no clear indication as to where Melbourne was. Employing that marvelously uninhibited ability girls have for asking for directions, Seka quickly got us back on track, though we switched places so that I would be the one driving through the city.

The lighthouse at dusk.

We, and by "we" I suppose I mean "I", managed to get a bit disoriented, and thought that I had missed Melbourne, when in fact we were still some miles away. Making a few turns, and a 580 degree lap around a traffic circle, I made the first legitimately illegal act when I tried turning right on a red light. This, of course, if much like trying to make a left on a red light in the States, and but for some swift acceleration, we might have been skewered by oncoming traffic. Nervously laughing off the incident, Seka proved herself the best female driving companion I've ever had for her total lack of shrieking panic exhibited during the turn.

It would take some veering across lanes and even more backtracking before we finally made it back into the city, but once there, Seka felt confident about her ability to guide us back to the hostel. Everything went well up until the final turn out St. Kilda Street. We had a green light this time, so the left turn should have been painless... except that we ended up turning in the wrong way down a rather large one-way street. Five lanes of headlights were suddenly barreling down on us, and I have to thank years of computer gaming for saving our insurance deposit, if not our lives. Again, Seka handled the situation with remarkable restraint, but it was with overwhelming relief that we finally turned the engine off once parked in the hostel lot.

Running of a "we're still alive" high, we met up with Adam in the lobby, and the lot of us arranged to meet up at one of the local bars. After grabbing a quick dinner, Seka and I did just that, arriving for Indy Night at the Malibu bar. The beer was disappointing, but cheap, and the DJ was pumping out a good mix. We stayed until close, before making our way back to the hostel, singing Irish drinking songs as we walked.

It's already passed midnight here in Sydney, so I'll have to wrap this up here. Tomorrow I'll be waking up early, and making my way to New Zealand, so I expect to have plenty of time to write about how it is I made it here to Sydney, and everything I've done since. For now, it's time to pack and arrange transportation to the airport tomorrow morning. G'day.