Retaining the Ashes - Hurray for England

On boxing day we joined about 85,000 others to watch England and Australia battle it out for the Ashes. We had an awesome day and the Aussies ended up all out with only 98 runs. The crowd were fantastic and we had a great time taking the Micky out of the Aussies.

What a great score board:

Here is Clarke doing the walk of shame:

The Barmy Army were awesome:

Too true:

We also went back on day 2 as we'd had so much fun the day before. This event seriously cheered us up and stopped us from missing everyone back home a bit.

We're now off to Tasmania on the bikes for a month. Our van goes into the garage today to get all of its dents removed (too many trees jumping out at us!). We'll be sorry to leave the luxury of our van and it feels very alien to be cycling again.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE AND KEEP FOLLOWING US IN 2011.

Great Ocean Road

Before we arrived in Melbourne we drove along the Great Ocean Road with it's spectacular coastal scenery.

Christmas Photos

Here we are enjoying the sunshine in Federation Square, Melbourne on Christmas Eve.

We had a good cry watching 'It's a Wonderful Life'

Merry Christmas from Melbourne

Merry Christmas and happy new year still missing you all loads.

we got to watch Its a wonderful life on christmas eve in mebourne and share christmas day with a few aussies over turkey and mince pies

photos to follow

Amazing, wonderful, fabulous Kangaroo Island

We arrived in kangaroo Island and went to a honey farm and then a eucalyptus distillery. All very calm and civlised.

The following day we went to Paul's Wildlife Park and it was madness. Three hours of being bombarded with animals of all shapes and sizes. There were kangaroos, a fawn, sheep, koalas, lobsters, mice, emus and lots more. We've not laughed so much for ages. A family had tipped us off about the place months ago and it exceeded expectations. As soon as we got through the gate I had a 30kg kangaroo thrust into my arms which I fed with a bottle of milk. We shared the visit with about 20 others, including 4 Indian families that seemed to make the experience even funnier.

Here's me with the food bucket being literally attacked by animals. The emus and the sheep were the worst.

Nic took over the feeding thank goodness:

Next we got to cuddle a koala:

and hold a possum:

and be attacked by birds:

and hold a snake:

Nic also had food poured on him and attacked by emus:

We also went to see the Remarkable Rocks:

We went down the koala walk during the day and at night and saw lots of wild koalas:

We also saw sea lions:

and penguins coming home:

Kangaroo Island is a majical place full to bursting with wildlife. Very Special.

Breakdown

We left Adelaide and then our fuel pump started spraying out diesel. We left the van and went to find a garage and luckily there was one just around the corner. We managed to drive the van around very cautiously and the mechanic took a loot at it. He couldn't fix it so we arranged to get a tow truck to take us to the Adelaide Merc garage. This happened on a Friday we had the ferry booked for Kangaroo Island on the Saturday and they said they would fix it on Tuesday as they would have to order the part. Nightmare! We thought we'd be spending 4 nights in our van outside the garage! This is the tow man - very nice and very hairy!

Anyway, we arrived at 3.30 and they had the part in stock and got it fixed by 5pm. Fabulous. How lucky are we?

We got the ferry to Kangaroo Island on the Sunday, only a day late.

Naracoorte Caves

How scary is this stuff? We visited Naracoorte Caves which is World Heritage Listed. In the 1970's they found an area the size of an olympic swimming pool with animal bones dating back up to 500,000 years. They've only analysed a tiny percentage and have found all sorts of bones from newly discovered Mega Fauna. Including this chap; a huge leaf eating kangaroo type animal:



The giant lobster (more like a crayfish) was seen on the way to the caves. You can just see me underneath:

This cuddly chap was an elephant type animal:

Flinders Ranges, Yorke Peninsula and Adelaide

We visited the wonderful Flinders Ranges and had a few days enjoying greenery after brown Coober Pedy. There were Emus everywhere:

Here is Nic at the Hill's Homestead. Jessie Hill lived here with her parents for about 20 years before they gave up farming as there was either drought or flood.

A view of the Pound; a circle of mountains with a huge flat area in the middle. This is where the Homestead is.

There was a huge storm one evening and lots of the towns on the Yorke Peninsula lost power. We stayed on the coast and it was exciting watching the lightning and hearing the thunder. The next day we found this huge spider on the inside of the van door, it must have come in to escape the storm. I'm glad it didn't go any further and decide to get in bed with us!

We arrived in Adelaide the day after the cricket test match ended and we'd thrashed the Aussies. We went into town and met 3 of the English supporters in a bar and it was nice to chat with some fellow Poms.

The next day we walked miles to see some of the Adelaide sights; we went to an Aboriginal art gallery, we had a look at the Oval, we strolled beside the river and we went around the huge food market. Adelaide is a lovely city and the suburbs are so pretty. They've had record levels of rain here this year after 8 years of drought so everything looks green and the blossom trees are in full bloom.

Leaving WA, crossing the Nullarbor, Eyre Peninsula and Crazy Coober Pedy

We left the coast in W.A and drove north to Norseman, the start of the famous Nullarbor; a 1200km road through barren landscpes between WA and SA. One part is 90 miles of totally straight road - exciting! Imagine what it must be like on a bicycle. We did it in 2 days and it was a huge relief to get to Ceduna and have a day off from driving. Once again we had to declare our fruit and veg and change our watches (forward by 2 1/2 hours). There are now 5 different times within Australia - crazy!!

After our rest we drove around the Eyre Peninsula, there wasn't much there but we had a look at the haystacks; pink limestone boulders:

We spent the night alone at the camp ground in coffin bay with only the wallabies and birds for company:

We then decided to drive 600km each way to Coober Pedy. This place looks like Mars and due to the high temperatures (it gets to 50C in the summer), half of the people live underground in their dugouts. Luckily for us summer seems to be late here and it as only 25C. 80% of the people come from overseas and they all do the same thing, dig for opals on their own little plots.

We decided to spend a night at the only underground campsite in the world. It was lovely and cool:

We went to visit Crocodile Harry's place. He died a few years ago but his house is still open for viewings. Totally crazy and very colourful!

We also went to a kangaroo orphanage and met the lovely chap who cares for them until they can release them back into the wild.

This is Ebony - only 6 weeks old.

These signs are all over CP:

We also went to visit a mine. This one was rediscovered when a couple needed an extra bedroom in their dugout:

They also found some old newspapers and one of they had this photo of an advert for cigarettes - nice!!!

On the drive back to 'civilisation' we took a walk along this huge salt lake.