A Month in South Australia! // EFRT Episode 23

Welcome to another episode of The Ethnic Family Road Trip. This week's episode is about our trip to South Australia. We have some relatives there and while we were down under we thought it would be a great idea to hop from Auckland to Adelaide. That's where our family lives and it's a beautiful city right in the middle of the southern portion of the continent of Australia. We had been on the road for over a year and so we thought it would be nice to have some downtime and to relax, get to know a lot of family that we had never met and in true Epic Family Road Trip style, of course we took an awesome road trip while we were there. We can't wait to bring you the beautiful footage from that amazing continent and definitely our plans are to go back there sometime with our own vehicle when we have at least six months maybe longer. It is a huge continent and we'd love to do an overlanding trip up into the north into some of those very remote areas of that beautiful country but for now we're going to show you our trip on the Great Ocean Road, we're going to show you around the city of Adelaide, some of the amazing beaches there, we have all kinds of activities we participate in with our family there like hitting a cricket game in their big stadium in Adelaide, going to the beaches, doing some surfing in Goulwa, going fishing out in the bay, a lot of really fun stuff. You're going to love this week's episode. Make sure your seat belt is upright, aft is deployed and window shades are open. For the first week after we arrived in Adelaide we stayed with our uncle Ernie and Aunt Margo. They have a beautiful little place in the suburbs of Adelaide under a hill called Brown Hill which became our favorite place to go hiking. When you climb up that hill you get a panoramic view of the ocean and the entire city of Adelaide. What a beautiful place. This country around Adelaide is world famous for its wineries, the wines are shipped all over the world, the climate is just wonderful, there's koalas and kangaroos and just a really awesome place. We definitely have it on our list to go back and visit. On one of the days we were very excited because we got to go charter fishing with our relatives. It was a very fun experience. Next we went to a fun swimming spot near Adelaide where we snorkeled in the clear blue ocean. Look at the bottom. So cool. And you can see such cool things. And it's so clear. After an incredible week with our family in Adelaide we decided to rent a car and take a road trip along the Great Ocean Road. This is a world famous scenic drive that if you're ever in Australia I recommend you do. We left from Adelaide and we headed down to the ocean and then drove all the way across to Melbourne. We crossed through some incredible scenery. We stopped so many times we thought we'd never get there. The Great Ocean Road stretches 244 kilometres along the southeastern coast of Australia between the cities of Torquay and Warrnambool in the state of Victoria. The road was built by returned soldiers after World War I and is the world's largest war memorial. We had a long journey ahead of us travelling about 923 kilometres from Adelaide to Melbourne in two days. Look, we stayed overnight in Warrnambool while we were here so that's why we crossed. A highlight of the Great Ocean Road is getting to see the Twelve Apostles limestone stacks off the coast of Port Campbell National Park in Victoria. There are currently only eight limestone stacks left due to erosion from the harsh climate of the Southern Ocean, but the remaining stacks stand up to 50 metres above the sea and are a truly spectacular sight. Along the Great Ocean Road we also stopped at a few different beaches surrounded by tall sea cliffs. Since it was winter back in Canada where we are from, we were still trying to adjust to the new climate down under. Another highlight of our road trip was visiting the Great Ocean Road Wildlife Reserve in Prince Town. After a couple of wonderful days on the Great Ocean Road, we stopped in Melbourne to have lunch with a good friend of ours from Canada. When we arrived back in Adelaide, we got to meet more family and we did an incredible hike up a mountain called Mount Lofty. That was a lot of fun and it gave us a big spectacular view of the entire surrounding areas. We went to their house after for lunch and man is our aunt a very good cook. Just outside of the city of Adelaide is a beautiful climb called Mount Lofty and we just climbed it. It's about 8 kilometres round trip from the bottom. The views here are incredible overlooking the ocean and the city. Another aunt of ours in Adelaide offered us the opportunity to house sit for her while she was out of state. That was a fun time for us because we had been on the road for over 14 months living in an RV and camping and to sit still in one place in a house for that long was a really fun experience. Especially during Christmas time. That was so fun. Thank you Aunt Honey, we really enjoyed that. Having a BBQ just before Christmas is kind of different for a Canadian and it's really nice and warm. Really hot out actually. It's about 30 degrees Celsius, it's supposed to go up to 36 by the end of the week so that should be different. Then on Christmas it's supposed to be around 36 or so and we're heading out to the beach. So all brand new experiences for us Canadians, we're used to snow on the ground and definitely not barbecuing. We spent the entire Christmas season there. Now this was our first Christmas season in a warm place. We're normally celebrating Christmas in Canada where it's cold and snowy and our tradition is to get out and go snowboarding on the hills and things like that. In Australia the tradition is different. Because the weather is so warm everyone heads down to the beach and has a BBQ. So on Christmas day we packed everything into the car and we headed out to a little ocean town called Goulwa where our relatives have a beach house. It was a fun gathering. Everyone got together and for the first time we headed down to the beach and did some surfing. After an awesome time in Goulwa we took our time heading back to Adelaide and we went through some really quaint beautiful little towns. When we got back to Adelaide we got invited to another really neat cultural event, a cricket game at the big stadium in Adelaide. We know about baseball but we knew very little about cricket so it was fun to learn the game and understand how it works. It's actually quite fascinating. We had an incredible time there. After an awesome visit to South Australia we packed our bags and we were getting ready to head back to Auckland when I got an email saying that our jeep shipment had been further delayed by about 20-24 days. So we couldn't really head to Auckland without our jeep being there so we had to be quick and nimble and make some plans right away. I called my travel agent and had our flights delayed and then we went down to a travel agent and we started looking at places we could go for 21 days and luckily we found Bali, Indonesia. So next week's video is going to be about our trip to Bali. I hope you enjoyed this week's video in Australia and stay tuned for an incredible time, a very interesting educational cultural event in Indonesia coming up next week. If you haven't already make sure you hit the subscribe button and join us on our Epic Family Road Trip. Also, if you could leave a comment down below, we'd love to hear from you. Make sure you check out our Gear Review Show, we'll continue posting them every Tuesday and Thursday. And in the meantime, we'll see you down the road.