Crawling and Falling
Trip Start
Jun 07, 2008
1
19
22
Trip End
Jun 06, 2009
Noosa, Queensland, Australia
Monday, December 29, 2008
So when I left Tassie I next set off on a Great Ocean Road tour, which took me from Naracoorte in Southern Australia to Melbourne. Day 1 mainly involved crawling on my belly through dark, confined spaces, discovering that despite what my brain thought my body can in fact bend that way! Yep, you guessed it...we went caving. First challenge of the day was to fit through the Eye of the Needle....a hole about 25cm deep and about the same wide. I honestly thought that there was no chance in hell that I was going to get the puppies through there and was already planning all kinds of rescue strategies, like taking off the scaffolding and putting one through at a time....left one, right one. But, to my surprise my rib cage is obviously a lot smaller than I thought....the biggest struggle was getting my head through....yes I know what you're thinking...inflated ego! But hey I tell you, it does wonders for the self esteem!
Day 2 we headed to the Grampians and went stomping up Mount Zero and then visited McKenzie Falls and a few other look out points. Day 3 was the one we'd all been waiting for....the Great Ocean Road. Flying over the 12 Apostles in a helicopter was undoubtedly the best way to take it all in. The view was stunning. The whole area was picture perfect.
I chilled out in Melbourne for a couple of days and caught up with friends I've met along the way before catching a 23 hour coach back to Katie's in Brisbane ready for Christmas. I mean, what's another day on a Greyhound coach when you've already spent about 10 days on them over 4.5months!? I spent a day catching up with myself and then did quite possibly the craziest thing I've done so far on this trip.....I threw myself out of a plane.
Yep 14,000ft up, falling at 200km per hour....what else would you rather be doing on 23rd Dec? Last minute Christmas shopping...I think not. I'm afraid that I don't have any photos to show you of this yet as they're in the process of taking the stills off the video. But, it'll be sent back home in the next week or 2 and I'm hoping that one of my kind sisters will upload them for me. So, back to the fall....I wasn't given any opportunity to bottle out...straight from the transfer coach into the harness, into another transfer bus onto the airstrip, into the plane and then out of it.
I'll tell you something it's bleedin freezing at 14,000ft but the views aren't too bad at all! You soon don't notice the temperature though as you're screaming your lungs out (or trying to...it's difficult to manage anything at 200km ph), whilst hurtling to the ground. I loved every second of it. I'll research ways of converting the DVD and getting it on here for you to watch. And, it would seem that my Cheshire grin prevented the flappy wind face syndrome that almost everybody gets.....didn't do anything about the bingo wings though unfortunately. It was AWESOME.
I spent Christmas with Katie and Matt (who've just got engaged...Congratulations) at Matt's folks' house in Noosa....quite possibly the most amazing house I've ever had the pleasure of staying in. We ate, we drank, we ate and drank some more, we dipped in the pool and the hot tub and in the sea...this is the life! I was really upset to leave. Sue and Robert really made me feel like one of the family and I can't thank them enough for making it such a wonderful Christmas. So, I'm now back in Sydney again, catching with Daniel and abusing his free Internet before heading to New Zealand on Saturday morning.
We're off to Blackwattle Bay Park in a few hours to meet up with a select few, picnic on the grass and set up base to watch the fireworks. Relaxing picnic or standing room only with the other 999,999 people at Darling Harbour.....hmmmm, no contest there really.
So, I guess all that's left for me to say is "Happy New Year". Bring on 2009...it's gonna be a great one!
Love you all x x
