the 'oz experience' - lakes entrance, wilsons promontory, and melbourne

We stayed the night at Lakes Entrance at a more average hostel called the Riviera Backpackers. It was an early night because we had to be up and on the bus by 6:30am.

Once we grabbed some toast to go and were on the bus, we made our way to the lake just during the start of the sunrise and it was really beautiful. I wish we could have stayed and watched the sun come up but unfortunately we couldn't because we were on a bit of a schedule.

Then we were on our way to Raymond Island, a nearby town that had a 5 minute ferry ride to Koala Island where we could see some koalas in the wild. We spotted 19 koalas but I'm sure there were more around just well hidden in the trees. It was quite tricky to spot them. The first one I "spotted" was a tree branch.. haha, but then I did spot one later one! We also so a baby koala (aka joey) it was so cute! There were a lot of mosquitoes out too and they were eating us alive.. I was lucky that I had a couple girls around me that the mosquitoes (aka mozzies) liked more than me so I only got a 3 or 4 bites. I also got to see some black swans when we were on the ferry.

After some koala spotting, we were on the road again and we stopped in Foster for lunch (which is about 2 hours away from Melbourne). But, we have one more stop before we arriving in Melbourne, which was Wilsons Promontory National Park where we went on a short wildlife walk. We got to see some emus,  and lots of kangaroos! I thought the coolest thing was to see the kangaroos hopping away just meters away from us.

So then we were on the road again, to our final destination - Melbourne! I think we were all pretty excited about it so we were awake and chatting and playing some road trip games. I was pretty excited to see Sosan and Matt and their baby girl Aria! We arrived in Melbourne at about 6:30pm and I got off at the Backpackers with a couple other girls who were staying there, and waited there for Matt and Sosan to pick me up! And in no time, they were there and Prima, their dog came along for the ride too!

My first night in Melbourne was pretty easy going, we stayed in and watched the Royal Wedding with Matt's mom and sister.

More about Melbourne in the next post..