An overview of the road covered during our drive out of the Australian outback [~2,450 kms].
2018.04.05 – Alice Springs – Coober Pedy (AU) [690 kms] – We left our backpacker oasis at the crack of dawn. We stopped at McDonald’s for a quick breakfast and some lattes for the road. We felt a bit less stressed now as we were driving back towards Melbourne. The thought of a car breakdown in the middle of the Outback was always in our mind. We stopped at a few rest areas along the way for some photo opportunities. We had been looking forward, since our camping in Yulara, to our stay at the comfortable B&B in Coober Pedy. Upon arriving in town, we fueled up the car. We stopped for a short visit at the Umoona Opal Mine and Museum. We bought groceries for our evening meal cooking at our B&B. After checking into our accommodation, we did some clothes washing while enjoying the relaxing environment of our underground B&B. We also really appreciated our own cooked meal.
2018.04.06 – Coober Pedy – Port Augusta (AU) [539 kms] – We again left our accommodation shortly after the morning’s sunrise. The road traffic appeared lighter since we left Alice Spring yesterday than our journey in the other direction. Along the way, we stopped at a few rest areas and roadhouses. We felt quite relieved upon arriving in Port Augusta as we knew we were back to civilization. We stopped for snacks before checking into our accommodation. We had our evening meal at a nearby popular bar and grill restaurant.
2018.04.07 – Port Augusta – Adelaide (AU) [380 kms] – We finally had a late morning start as we checked out from our motel at around 10am. We enjoyed a relaxing breakfast at a nearby café before leaving town. We took a short detour along the way to grab some additional lattes in Port Pirie. Upon arriving in Adelaide, we promptly checked into our accommodation. We walked the streets in our neighborhood in search of some places to have a snack but being past 3:00pm on a Saturday, most places were closing or had already closed up. We finally bought some snacks at a small grocery store. We had our evening meal at a Mexican restaurant across the street from our accommodation.
2018.04.08 – Adelaide – Mount Gambier (AU) [463 kms] – We had decided to take a different route from Adelaide back to Melbourne. The proposed coastal route would allow us to experience the roads we would have encountered if we had opted to continue cycling to Adelaide. Even this new route forced us to drive back through the rugged and steeped Adelaide Hills. We stopped for breakfast in Mount Barker. We eventually connected again with the Princess Highway which appeared on the map as a nice coastal road. We were a bit disappointed when we realized that the road, although parallel to the sea, was still some distance away and as such it did not provide us with any views of the coast. Although the less traveled road appeared like that would be a great cycling route, we were surprised by the remoteness of the Coorong region, namely the distances between villages along the way.
We arrived in Mount Gambier late afternoon under some cloudy skies. We were tired from what felt like a long driving day. After checking into our modest accommodation, we walked to the town’s commercial center for our evening meal. The town was eerily quiet on this Sunday evening.
2018.04.09 – Mount Gambier – Simpson (AU) [312 kms] – As our motel’s friendly owner highlighted the previous evening, there were a couple to tourist sites that we proposed to visit before leaving town. After leaving our accommodation, we picked up some lattes and headed for a short drive to the Umpherston Sinkhole which housed a beautiful and unique sunken garden. On our way out of town, we stopped briefly at the volcano crater Blue lake. Our route along the Princess Highway was mostly inland throughout the day. We stopped for lunch in Portland where we met and chatted with a mature couple cycling their way from Adelaide to their hometown in the East Gippsland region. Towards the end of our driving day, the road finally met up with the coast which offered some spectacular views on the coastal cliffs. As the views improved, so did the number of cars and tour buses. There were so many tourists at the famous crumbling pillars of the Twelve Apostles scenic area that we opted to drive by and headed directly to our B&B, some 25kms away, in the small community of Simpson. Our accommodation was nice with views on some cattle farmland. Unfortunately, the small community had little to offer in terms of restaurants. We settled for some take-away hamburgers for our evening meal.
2018.04.10 – Simpson – Melbourne (AU) [303 kms] – We left our B&B and drove back to the Twelve Apostles’ visitor center. There were quite a few less visitors than when we passed by yesterday afternoon. The observation pathways offered plenty of great photo opportunities. We drove inland again through some fairly hilly area until we reached Apollo Bay. We had coffee and snacks in this very touristy town. Although we had been driving on Australia’s famous Great Ocean Road (GOR) for the past couple of days we had not been overly impressed, up to now, by the views as the road followed most of the time an inland path. This situation changed dramatically from Apollo Bay where the road started following the side of the cliffs along the coast. Back on an inland road towards Melbourne, we stopped in Geelong for a late afternoon lunch. The drive into Melbourne, during rush hour, was less hectic than when we left the city the previous week. We checked back into the same accommodation near the airport. The hotel staff delivered our bicycle box and trailer to our room while we had stepped out for our evening meal. We spent part of the evening re-organizing and carefully weighting our luggage to avoid any excess weight luggage fees.
2018.04.11 – Melbourne (AU) – We drove to a nearby bakery for breakfast before we returned our rental car. The process of returning our car was quite straight forward and there were no questions asked regarding our 6,000kms driven in 15 days. We slowly walked back to our hotel, hand in hand, while reviewing our travel memories from the past five and half months. We felt a bit of nostalgic coming to grip with the end of our cycling adventure. We spent the afternoon catching up with our blog and expense tracking. In the evening, we walked to a nearby strip mall for our last evening meal in Australia. We ate some good wood-fire cooked pizza!
