Some of the 12 Apostles. The name was changed in the 1800s to reflect a more spiritual feeling (it's a very popular area for shipwrecks!).
Woke up early again. It's definitely a holiday thing! Went online, discovered that my netpal Sheralee didn't even realise I'd gone on holiday LOL! Dang oh well she was drunk anyway! Nice girl, just a bit young! :p
After checking the weather forecasts, we decided to for a "little" drive, firstly to Colac as Kylie had to drop off some uniforms to the bank where she used to work, and then along the coastal road. We figured we'd do the Grampian Mountains tomorrow.
So we set off. It was almost two hours to Colac, and pretty flat, unmemorable, farming country. We passed through a few villages, some of which Kylie said "ooh that's a nice pub there, we'll have to go there sometime!". Given that I'm only here until Friday morning, and given that Kylie tries not to go out the night before she works, that doesn't really give us a lot of time! And "next time" might never happen - it's taken me at least 9 years to make it this far the first time, and Kylie's still thinking of working abroad for a year, and who knows, she might never come back!
Reached Colac at around lunchtime. She had a bit of catching-up session with her friend Carol at the bank, who Kylie said acted like a kind of mother-figure to her while she was in Colac. We had lunch from a nice bakers/deli shop (toasted foccacia sandwich and a pie), which we ate in the car, and then we drove down to the coast.
This was more interesting scenery. Pretty steep hills and a bit of pine forest. The road seemed to be forever rising. Every so often we'd pass through very small villages, some with only a couple of houses in them, that seemed pretty much miles from anywhere. Kylie said she wouldn't personally like to live so far out of the way; a bit different to Laure and Helen!
When we reached the coast, we ended up on a road running along the cliff top, overlooking the sea far down below. It was quite spectacular, and a little weird. We stopped off at a touristy site called the "Twelve Apostles", a series of rocky columns and outposts of irregular shapes originally part of the land but over the millennia had been partly washed away through the action of the sea.
It was strange to look out over the sea and think - just like I had done in Mooloolaba - that the next piece of land in e direct straight lane was a completely different continent, in this case, Antarctica!
We passed by a couple of other places to look out to sea, before arriving in the town of Warrnambool, yet another place where Kylie has lived - albeit for only a year or so. We drove around the harbour complex a bit, and then had a brief look around the town. It seems like quite a nice place actually; a bit functional but nothing too awful.
The last place we visited on the journey was a town called Port Fairy. Lisa had looked on a map to see where I was going, and stated that she wanted a postcard from Port Fairy, simply because of the name (her nickname is Sugarplum, as in the Sugarplum Fairy, and she likes anything to do with fairies), so we obliged! We went to the seafront to see people trying to surf in very small waves - although there was much better surf a couple of miles down the road at another part of the coast. The tide was right in; some steps leading down to the beach had waves lapping at the bottom!
We found a postcard shop in the town, then went to a café for a mid-afternoon snack (peppermint tea and apple crumble). Apparently, Port Fairy is quite exclusive - waiting lists for some holiday cottages to rent are up to a year in length! It's one of the nearest points on the coast to Hamilton, and indeed is sometimes nicknamed "South Hamilton" due to the numbers of people from there that holiday in Port Fairy.
We then drove straight back home to Hamilton. By the time we got there the sun had set; we'd been out all day, driving all day even, and it was really nice. Gawd knows how far we travelled, around 450km I think!
The evening was very very sociable, a few friends of theirs came round for drinks (wine) and food (spaghetti bolognaise, chocolate pudding), the making of which was an incredibly relaxed affair ("*how* much sugar are you putting in?" - "It'll bubble over the top of the tin / No it won't!"). There were so many of us that everything on the recipe that Kylie had, had to be doubled
Although she put it on the TV, much to the disgust of others round the table, there was so much conversation going on that Kylie missed the Beverly Hills 90210 Reunion Special! We ended up watching some weird and wonderful video clips from James' computer on the TV instead.
One of their friends, John, ended up playing on James' computer long into the night, and presumably stayed over. The rest of us went to bed around 1am-ish.