Melbourne on a campervan/ Day 7 (17 feb 2013, Sunday)

All of us woke up with red faces and noses and severe sun burnt this morning. The day started at 4.30 am Aud time for us as we wanted to catch the early morning light for our last shoot of this trip at the Cape Schanck Light Station. 

Sunrise at Cape Schanck Light station

We spent a couple of hours taking gown shots at the cape and left when the sun got really strong. On our way to Brighton for lunch now before returning the van and heading to the airport for our flight at 7pm Aud time. 

I love how Australians are always generous with their compliments and smiles. 

One week is too short.

Night, 6.17pm Aud time
Sitting at the waiting area to board the plane. Haven't had enough fun.

Had our biggest meal yet at Brighton this afternoon and a quick drive by the beach where the colourful changing rooms were. I liked Brighton. Today's temperature was at a scotching 35 oC and people were sunbathing. How did they do that in that heat??

Night, 6.48pm Aud time
Sitting on rows 24E to H and feeling a tinge of sadness from the short week. We haven't had time for many of the places we have originally planned for. Have had a great time though. Our first holiday adventure on a campervan isn't the most comfortable but it certainly has brought me more memories than the usual ones.

Going home.

Night, 11.30pm Sin time
In my half awake stupor, I carried my bags and walked out of the plane towards the PBB and for a split second I thought I was in China when 3 airport personnel stood and waited at the entrance of the plane in a row.  Genuinely thought so with my sleepy head.  =X

We are home and planning for next trip!

Melbourne on a campervan/ Day 6 (16 feb 2013, Saturday)

Day starts at 5.30am today. Today, we will be taking a morning hike for morning shoots and will be spending the day here at Wilsons.

I realized I don't really love hearing the waves too much when it sounds as though a hurricane is on its way.We took a 5 min walk to the waves late last night and the howling and swooshing of the waves scared me more than love it. It sounded like tsunami was coming. =X

Afternoon, 1.50pm Aud time

Sitting at the peak of mount Oberon with my legs dangling on the edge, overlooking the ocean and beach. This is the furthest I will go. Any more front will get me dizzy with fear. I'm tanning and looking after our bags while the rest moved on further to take their turn of the wedding gowns with the hub. The clouds are right above me and they are moving very fast with the strong wind. Once in a while, the wind sways me and makes me a little nervous. A big nervous actually. I am not very good with heights at all. Yihui looks beautiful in her gown and the scenery looks amazing. Their wedding photos will be magnificent. In the mean time till they come back, I need to stay calm.

6.41pm Aud time
Last few shots on Mount Oberon have been really nice. Unfortunately, all of us have also gotten sun burnt from being up there too long. Heading towards Mornington Peninsula now for our last leg of this one week holiday. Along the way, we have stopped by for photos on stacks of hay. And I have once again hurt myself by doing stupid things.

9pm Aud time

The nicest part of a day is the sunset.

Night

On the last night of our trip, we had the biggest adventure with no where to stay. We reached Mornington Peninsula at around 10pm and had tried a couple of camper van parks for vacant power sites. However,  all of them were full because of the weekend. By 11.30 pm, we were still driving and calling parks for vacancies and had contemplated parking at the road side for the night. We ended up deciding to park close to a camp site and sneak in to use their showers. While Hao Lun went to check out the camp site, Alv drove to a side corner to park the van, only to discover vacant power stations in the empty car park. At the same time, Hao Lun came back with good news saying that he managed to get one of the campers to disclose the pass codes for the washrooms when he pretended he had forgotten the codes. So we ended up having both power and shower for free on our last night. Lol.

Last dinner of 24 wings and mushroom soup.

Melbourne on a campervan/ Day 5 (15 feb 2013, Friday)

Woke up to surrounding filled bees and flies this morning. I think it's the Summer. We moved off from the campervan park with a quick shower at the common male toilet and unfilled water tanks for the tap. Just wanted to get out of that place as soon as we could. And because we were all nervous to leave quickly, Hao Lun accidentally broke the key of the LPG cover in the key hole. Big oopps.

We travelled out of the unpaved, gravel roads for a while before a car from behind us sped up ahead and signaled for us to stop. Apparently our LPG cover was flapping while we drove and they wanted to let us know before a car hits it. 

The guys fixing the LPG cover close with blue tack. With limited amount of blue tack, they started discussing the most effective positions to place them in engineering terms.

Took a quick lunch by a nice pond and we are now on our way to Wilsons Promontary National Park down South. The drive today is filled with greens.

Afternoon 2.44pm Aud time

Coffee break!

Night, 9.51pm Aud time
The weather at Wilsons Promontory is 18 oC with lots of wind. In fact, 'lots' is an understatement. The wind is howling every moment. Tonight, our campervan park is right beside the coast and it is absolutely lovely to be able to see the sea and feel the wind all the time.

10.27pm Aud time

Stabling ourselves from the strong wind.

We had just finished an evening shoot in a valley and the place was absolutely amazing. Reminded me a lot of Yosemite Park. There was a field of long grasses and a river that flows in parallel to the hills. And there was a bridge that went across the river that led to hiking tracks. In my Silhouette tulle gown, I had difficulty moving around because the wind was so strong and I was being shifted and moved by the wind. Imagine how strong the wind had been. I was a tad bit worried I might fall off the railings of the bridge on several occasions. The hub and I tried hard to maintain the hair that we had fixed but decided to give up in the end with that kind of wind.

After the shoot, we stopped by at Squeaky Beach. And squeaky it really was. 

Sunset by the beach had always been amazing.

Making dinner at our ensuite cabin. 

Melbourne on a campervan/ Day 4 (14 feb 2013, Thursday)

Valentine's Day

Valentine's day, Day

Our morning was greeted by a family of horses walking in our direction behind the barb fences. Love how charming horses always looks.

We started off Valentine's Day with a morning picnic in front of the camper van with a mini river flowing in front of us. Weather was good. It was warm but the wind was cool, and most importantly, there were no flies. For most of our outdoor meals so far, we were accompanied by hungry flies.

After packing up, we walked around town for the morning before heading off to our next destination at Bairnsdale where we would be sleeping for the night.

Besides the courtesy and friendliness of the people, the other thing that amazed me the most was the cleanliness of the toilets everywhere we went. No matter public toilets or common toilets or a random toilet stop along the drive, they were all clean, dry and well provided with tissue paper and wiping paper towels. And the best part of all was they don't smell like they hadn't been cleaned up for a while.

Another thing that amazed me was how accident prone I had been. Did a visa card advertisement dance and ended up with a pricked and bleeding foot. =Z

Evening
The drive towards Bairnsdale was mostly farm drive filled with hay and brown cows, with occasional horses and sheeps. The most beautiful part of this drive was the sunset. Weather was chilly but nothing as cold as last night.

Valentine's day, Night, 12.44am

Tonight we are powerless on our self sufficient campervan at a campervan park. The owner says power is out by 11pm-rule of this park. So cooking and shower is in-house tonight. We are on energy conservation mode. Only good thing is we still can top up water and the LPG is available for heated water. Tonight, we are his only guests. And tonight, we have been bugs attacked. While fixing up the water pipe to refill the water tank, Hao Lun has been jabbed by a bee on his back and it swelled. Hopefully it doesn't cause anything. It will be nice to sit out on the open tonight to look at stars if there haven't had any bees.

Melbourne on a campervan/ Day 3 (13 feb 2013, Wednesday)

Woke up to icy cold this morning at 6.30am. It was about 14 oC. The morning sun was a beautiful orange red and the surroundings were hazy because of forest fire. It was photo shoot at Bright this morning with gastric pain. 

Afternoon, 2.41pm Aud time

I think Australians are friendly. We have been getting smiles and chat ups from various groups ever since we have started our driving on Monday. Simple 'Hi's and 'Good day!'s make people feel good. Earlier today when we walked around Bright town for shoots, a group of 3 ladies coming out of a store saw us and had complimented our dressing and told us to enjoy ourselves and have a good day. "You guys look absolutely divine." Sounded so good. =P A couple of minutes later, one of them came back looking for us, asking if we were married or getting married soon. She was genuinely smiling with joy and shook both our hands before giving me and Alv each a peck on our cheeks. She then gave us her blessings and told us to have a good married life. A few minutes later, her friend  came to us and said she had heard we were getting married. She too shook our hands in congratulations and gave us her blessings. So utterly sweet for random strangers to do that. This would never happen at home. Unlikely.

Just finished instant noodles lunch at a quick pit stop. Heading towards Falls Creek for hiking and shoot. Intending to bring the gowns up together with us. I think it will be a nice walk. Finally seeing more greens than browns now and we are driving up on the hills on curvy roads.

4pm Aud time
Stopped over at field to take some photos. Great Alpine Road has a different kind of beauty from Great Ocean Rd. There were a mix of green trees and grey botak trees in on scenery. Took a group jumping photo on a suspension bridge when humpty dumpty fell to the ground and injured herself. =( And as usual, light injury or bad injury, the humpty dumpty turns white and blacks out. Only this time, I lay on the bench even before the full fledge came. Lousy. =( I tried to stay cool but just couldn't control the black outs.

Night
The drive to Falls Creek had many tight curves and the surroundings were still a mix of greens and botak trees. Only now there were more botak trees that made the whole mountain look grey and it gave a slightly creepy yet magical forest feel. When we finally reached the entrance of Falls Creek, the clouds had shifted in and it started to drizzle while we were brewing coffee on the bunsen burner on the open car park. It was at least 10 oC but the wind from the storm made it freezing cold. Pretty unbearable for the girls because both of us were in sleeveless dresses. We then came to a nice spot and decided to wait for the rain to stop for photos taking,

The rest of the drive to Omeo was really long and curvy. We lost phone connection along the way and there were absolutely no other cars. All we saw were trees and darkness. By the time we got to Omeo, it was already 12pm Aud time. Took us a while to locate the Omeo camper van park before we finally could wash up, power up, eat and rest for the night. Our longest day yet.

Melbourne on a campervan/ Day 2 (12 feb 2013, Tuesday)

Both of us took the bed at the top of the van last night and it was like a mini loft snug at the top. Campervans are quite amazingly compact and self-sufficient.

Woke up at 6.30am Aud time to get ready for morning shoot. Morning sunlight is supposingly pretty charming on photos. The morning was freezing when we left the van so I had to take a slow jog to the washroom to warm myself. It would be nice to go for a run in this cold. Breakfast this morning consist of coffee and bread with ham and cheese. Took a couple of morning sunlight and we are off to Mansfield. Belted up in the van now and practicing uku.

Afternoon, 3.59pm Aud time 
Cooked spagetti lunch at Power Lookout earlier and had lunch with amazing number of flies looking at us from the window. Just stopped by for ice cream at Everton and pictures of a cute made up bus shelter. We are now heading down Great Alpine Rd towards Bright where we'll be staying for the night. Hopefully we find a power site tonight for heater and shower. The temperature has gone up to 32 oC in the afternoon and everything along the road is brown. Trees are brown, grasses are brown and cows are in different shades of brown. No kangaroos or koalas on this side aye mate.

Night

Camp site was at Big 4 caravan park at Bright. We did grocery shopping before stopping by at a river to take a dip with the ducks. Water was really cold and the ducks were really fierce grabbing up the bread from us but we had lots of fun after a long day of driving.

Had bbq for dinner with a mix of mutton, chicken and beef steak with potatoes and onions. Had a bottle of Brown brothers Riesling to celebrate our holiday as well. Temperature at night had dropped to 14 oC. Clad in river soaked spaghetti top and shorts from earlier, I was freezing by the time we cleared up the dinner table at 10.30pm. Good dinner though.

I'm so glad the hub hasn't utter anything about work through this trip. Workaholic is taking a good rest off work.