Stephen and Kate go upside down

 Question: When are there not twelve apostles? Answer: When there are seven of them. But that truth did not stop us from driving a few hours along the coast to see them. The twelve apostles is a strange name for seven bits of rock sticking out of the sea. There were nine. Two have fallen over in the last twenty years. But there were never twelve. They have had other names, like the pig and piglets. I suppose the twelve apostles does lend a certain gravitas to the location even if it does present a numerical idiosyncrasy. All that aside, we arrived at the stunning location and yet again, were bowled over at not having to pay to park the car. We started by making our way to Gibson's Steps. We never found out who Mr. or Mrs. Gibson are, but they certainly do a crackin step. Or 86 of them to be precise. Without them, getting from the cliff top to the beach would have been possible only for rock climbers. The view from both the cliff top and the beach was truly stunning. It felt ridicul...

 We walked up to Mariner's Outlook today. What you can be pretty sure of, is that no one walked to Mariner's Outlook last night. Not even the hardiest of mariners. Thunder, lightening, driving rain and howling gales tore along this coast all night.  In short, we had the gorgeous squidgyness of rain prophesied in the previous evening's news. The fact that it had settled down in the morning prompted us to get togged up and set off to Mariner's Outlook as soon as we could. More unpleasantness had been promised, weather wise. The climb of 1,000ish feet was supposed to take two hours, there and back, so we were pleased to do it in half the time and be back in Apollo Bay for 10am even if coffee was therefore a whole hour too soon. We got over it.  Then the weather closed in and we thought that was it for the day. It seems that the noble art of predicting the weather is as elusive down under as it is in the UK. True, there were squalls, but nothing compared to what was thrown ...

 We could be as leisurely as we liked today. So why did we set off at 8:30? Getting increasingly difficult to put it down to jetlag. Minutes after setting off, we stopped in Emerald at a bakery/coffee shop I spotted when we arrived  I decided it was time for a coffee. Come on, we had been on the road for four minutes. The bakery was full of seriously good looking bread and cakes. Somehow, we managed to avoid them. The shopkeeper said that was rare. The coffee was sublime and cost the equivalent of £2 for both! We then wended our way back towards Melbourne on our way to the Great Ocean Road. Wended is the word which best describes our progress. We tried coming off for a loo stop in the middle of some very complicated motorway junctions and ended up going to and fro in the Melbourne area. However, this did afford us wonderful views of the city as we crossed huge bridges revealing wonderful outlines of the skyscrapers. After eventually finding some loos, we put aside all wending ...

 Today is the day we visit my Aunt and Uncle. David is my Dad's brother. They have a son called little David. He is 6'5". We have a son called David. That's three men in our family all called David Price. It gets very confusing. Somebody needs to put a stop to it.  We drove to the other side of Emerald and into the prettiest valley we have seen so far. David and Mary's house was at the bottom of a rough track which was so steep it felt like we would do a somersault in the car. Their house is a great big log cabin which David built in the 70s. It's amazing. And it looks out over a stunning valley, much of which is land owned by themselves. Over the years, they have had cows, sheep, chickens and more. Now their menagerie consists of cats, dogs and birds. That would be too much for us to handle but they told us of a friend of theirs down the road who likes to watch a certain telly programme every day. She left the front door open one day and when she went back in...