Forty two weeks down... part 2...

Continuing on from my last post, my friends and I got up bright and early and headed to Gloria Jean's for a coffee while we waited for thrifty car hire to open.

Once we got our ford focus we tried to head out of Melbourne (easier said than done) to join The Great Ocean Road. I would suggest doing The Great Ocean Road in summer as the weather made it quite cloudy and wet, which made looking out the window harder. 

Our first stop was Geelong, which is the second largest populated area in Victoria (Melbourne of course is the first).

We walked along the beach and stopped off at a restaurant called Sailors Rest for brunch. I had Eggs Benedict with hash browns and bacon. I cleverly managed to drop my eggs all down my dress. So after a quick dress change we were ready to head off again...

We carried on the Great Ocean Road and stopped off at places on the way such as Torquay, Lorne and Apollo Bay.

We listened to our homemade CD's while driving along taking in the most beautiful views. Well until it all went wrong...

We thought we may have missed the twelve apostles so we decided to stop in a lay by. As we indicated to turn into a lay by, a tour bus decided to overtake us. The bus crashed into the back of the car sending us down into a ditch. Lucky none of us were seriously injured, however, the car was completely totalled.

We were taken to hospital in Colac just to get checked out and make sure everyone was fine. 

Colac was in the middle of nowhere! It's an hour away from any of the cities, with no means of public transport in the evenings. So to put it nicely we were pretty screwed! (See Colac on the map below)

One of the nurses was an absolute god send! She offered us a place to stay at her house where her daughter stays. She gave four complete strangers keys to her house. Her generosity and kindness to us will never be forgotten. Her husband also came to check on us that evening and bought us milk and orange juice which was really sweet. About midnight the daughter and her mates came back and we sat with them until the early hours chatting.  

The next day one of the guys we met the night before drove a friend and I back to Geelong which was an hour away so we could get another hire car. We then drove back to Colac to get our other friends, so we could eventually set off and get back on The Great Ocean Road...

After driving two hours, we eventually made it to the twelve apostles which I have to admit it was slightly disappointing. I realised they were literally just rocks...

We continued along The Great Ocean Road but pulled over as we saw more rocks near Port Campbell. They were beautiful, much better than the overly tourist sight of the twelve apostles. It was quite weird to think everything that happened lead us to this view...

The rest of the drive lasted another 8 hours. We pretty much stopped in every McDonalds to keep everyone awake. The journey itself was horrendous as it was dark and windy. I was pretty scared the whole way, especially, trusting anyone to drive after the accident. 

We eventually arrived in Adelaide at 1am after a very traumatic couple of days. I could finally breathe a sigh of relief! 

See my next post to find out what I got up to next.... 

Keeping you posted.

Sarah x