I woke up in good time for the bus, and since I had packed, just had to strip the bed and hand the laundry and key in dor my deposit.
I headed to the door to wait for the bus, and the first Groovygrapes one that arrived was for the Outback tour (going the other way to the one I had taken). That caused some confusion, but I also got to meet two of the people on this tour as they also made the same mistake as me. They had been staying at the YHA hostel next door, so we chatted and I found out they were Karin and Sarah from Switzerland.
The bus arrived, and then made its way round the rest of Adelaide to pick up all of the group, who were duly introduced: Isla from Scotland, Amanda from the USA (both girls were working in Adelaide as Au Pairs).
There was also a couple, Linda and Lucien from Switzerland (tht made it 4 from Switzerland!), as well as Yen (Henry) and Eric from China.
We were immediately handed pens by our tour guide, and got to work drawing on the windows.
We stopped for lunch at a picnic area, and enjoyed BBQ steak and salad in tortilla wraps.
After lunch, we stopped by the Pink Lake, a salt lake in South Australia, pink due to the salt levels. We got some great photos, and then headed to Horsham to buy beer for the evening. I recommended that we all club together to get a crate of beers, as that would work out cheaper, which was the case.
The next stop was Mckenzie falls and broken falls. The group was getting ready to stop at every way point on the way down so I recommended doing it the other way - going all the way to the bottom, the main attraction, then we could use the other stop points as excuses to rest on the way back. This was taken on board as a great idea, and the group decided that I was de facto the leader of them, after the tour guide!
We headed on to Reed Lookout and the Balconies, which offered fantastic views of the Grampians. We set up a full group photo, and then headed back to the minibus, where we discovered that the 2017 on one of the art pieces was backwards. The numbers were right, but it read 7102!
We headed back to the town at 6.20, and got to the lodge where we were to spend the night, and got to work preparing the meal.
Once we had all eaten the rest of the evening was spent clebrating the new year, and we enjoyed playing games - we tried to get 'Heads Up' but it took too long to download on to any phones!
We almost missed the bells but fortunately someone was paying attention to the TV, and we were able to toast in the new year with a healthy glass of whiskey each, which was appreciated by all!
After the whiskey, we broke out the sparklers and had great fun trying to write 2017 for the camera, and eventually decided that it would be easier to write normally and flip the image later!