Today saw the actual end to our first leg of the holiday. As i’ve mentioned before, as we were packing our bags up properly and heading for an airport, it genuinely felt like it was the end of the holiday…as if the plane was going to be taking us home rather than to the next 2 week segment of the holiday. Once again, I could get used to this 4 week holiday stuff…

The day started off with another breakfast buffet in the Holiday Inn – fruit, cereal and, as it was the last morning, treated ourselves to a cheeky cooked breakfast. We also ended the breakfast in a similar mood to the previous day with some pain au chocolats and Danish pastries…we are on holiday after all.

With all the bags packed, it was a relatively simple case of going up stairs and grabbing the final bits and bobs. Well, I say relatively simple…of course the bags were not completely packed so there was some last minute ‘cramming’ (which included sitting on the bags to get them to close properly!) and we were checked out before the deadline of 10am.

After our final taxi in Cairns, we were through the checkin/security malarky in plenty of time and found that we had over an hour to wait before our flight….for either of us to have a spare hour is incredibly surprising, for the both of us, its relatively unheard of. So, with the extra time, a quick perusal of the shops was afforded to us and also another wee book read…Amy had now finished her 1st book so the race is on to complete the next one.

The flight was quite uneventful – although I should point out one thing. If anyone is planning on flying Virgin Australia, download their app. I still havent but, they have onboard wifi and if you want to experience any of their onboard entertainment, you need to do it via this app. I did not have this app. So, for a change Amy slept and I got a chance to read some more of my book.

We arrived in Melbourne just before 4, walked outside to be greeted by clouds, 14oC and a nice cold wind. Now, I appreciate that I shouldn’t really comment as 14oC in November for a Brit is fantastic and as the winds are ripping through the UK at the moment, I should be grateful that the cold breeze was all we recieved. However, we just left 31oC and I was still wearing a t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops…I did stand out a bit as the majority or Melbourne-ites were all in their winter coats.

We grabbed our car from Hertz eventually…cue McKinley’s 2nd piece of advice. As there is no legal requirement for Aussie’s to have car insurance (with the exception of 3rd party, fire and theft), as you can imagine, there are quite a few uninsured drivers. Therefore, if you get ‘a bump’, you (or your insurer), will need to pay for it. Due to this, Hertz are somewhat wary of letting people take their cars away without adequate cover so, without taking onboard one of their (quite pricey) insurance deals, the excess was going to be $5500. And, as there is a significant possibility that, if someone hits you, they don’t have insurance, you will have to fork out the $5.5k…

So, what i’m trying to say is, they have you over a barrel really. You cant really drive around with a potential excess of $5.5k when there is a significantly increased likelihood that you’ll have to fork it out…for someone else’s mistake. Especially as we will be driving ‘in the boonies’ a little, its best to be safer than sorry we felt.

After the Hertz debacle, it was on to the Prince’s Highway to ‘Berwick’ to meet Amy’s friends, Jen and Paul. They live in a fantastic 5 Bedroom home about an hour out of Melbourne city centre and had happily agreed to put us up. Lucky for us that they had so many bedrooms as they were also playing hosts to Jen’s parents!

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After dropping off the bags, we all sat down to a lovely dinner and a catch up. After a cheeky cup of tea (and a couple biscuits), it was off to bed as we were due to hit the Great Ocean Road tomorrow. Back on the road again…