melbourne - day 1

An insanely early flight at 6am found me crawling out of bed at about 3.30am and fumbling in the dark to pack those last minute items. It sucks being early cause then I spent another 10 minutes after mum dropped me off at Justin's place, standing outside his door trying to get someone to open it for me. Turns out Justin was in the shower and poor me was left outside in the cold, half asleep. But hey, it was a day off work for me and a massive day ahead to look forward to :P Since starting full-time work, it seems like ages since I've had a holiday!

And who would've thought there would be traffic so early in the morning! Some car accident led the 4 of us (Leong, Edith, Justin & myself) to frantically run through the airport to make our flight. The odds weren't good so it was breakfast as we waited for the next Jetstar flight heading to Melbourne. Fortunately, it wasn't going to be a long wait; and just enough time to down a massively huge blueberry muffin and slice of toasted banana bread, with coffee of course!


Speedy or what?! (The last time I was in Melbourne was probably when I was 5). An hour and five minutes on the plane and we arrived at Avalon Airport in Melbourne picking up our Hertz hire car. Leong had that all organised and really, I thought it was quite reasonable; I thought just the insurance bit was going to kill us with all of us being under 25. (Yay! The guys were going to take care of the driving!) And so we started our trip along the Great Ocean Road...

Our hired Corolla

Split Point Lighthouse - famous for being featured in Round the Twist

A stunning view along the Great Ocean Road (one of many stops along the way)

Erskine Falls
Lunch @ The Great Ocean Road Restaurant + my not so good Soy Chai LatteJustin's self-proclaimed 'green' sandwich which contained prosciutto. It took some convincing for Justin to realise that prosciutto was actually smoked ham.
Lunch was sometime past 2 and after doing the first leg of driving, Leong was definitely hungry.This photo was taken on top of the lighthouse at the most Southern point of Australia (or so it claimed to be - we later read that it was actually another place; anyhow the entrance fee to get to the top was $12.50 - expensive!)

After our visit to Australia's most 'Southern point', it was a mad-dash to the car and some Initial D driving to get to the 12 Apostles in the nick of time. We had about 5 minutes to click away before the sun set completely over the Apostles, shadowing what little really remains.

And in amongst all that, I kept dozing off in the car (much to Justin's dismay and especially when I continued to doze off when it was his turn to do the driving). Couldn't be helped; I'd only slept for around 4 hours the night before. Thanks to the GPS, at least I didn't get an ear-bashing from Justin for not being able to read a map :P

At exactly 480km later and with fuel tank warning signs on, we arrived at our place of stay, Rialto Towers in Melbourne's CBD. Cold and hungry, we grabbed some quick pub grub before calling it a night.