Our week on the road (3)

Tuesday 6th February - 21,000 steps - 14 kms

Our campsite was a bit further out of town than we had become used to, but when we eventually made it down to the town centre of Port Fairy, it was lovely. Good beaches, river walks, wharf and a small island bird sanctuary. Our first mistake, however, was following a map which clearly showed a causeway from the beach to the island. Not any more - we had to retrace our steps and cross a bridge instead. We walked out to the lighthouse, passing an odd wallaby taking shade under a tree, until we eventually got out to the lighthouse point:

Wednesday 7th February

On the road again, heading for Robe, where we'd been with Chris and Kelly a couple of years ago. We crossed the state line from Victoria to South Australia and the road changed to a long straight one - no more Great Ocean Road. The clock had changed too - half an hour back. We made just one main stop at Mount Gambier, visiting the local tourist attraction of the Blue Lake and its two sisters, all formed by volcanic eruptions back in the day and subsequently filled with ground water which contained some kind of crystals which turns the water a stunning vivid blue at this time of year:

We parked up at the adjacent Valley Lake and had a cup of tea with cheese and crackers, then hit the road again.

Thursday 7th February - 30,000 steps - 19 kms

The campsite at Robe was virtually on the beach but at the western end of town, so it was a good walk back east towards the point where we'd walked back in 2016. In fact, at the end of the day, we did it twice - and a bit more in my case - to notch up a new 2018 daily high of over 30,000 steps. We had coffee at the Marina then walked round the point, past the old gaol and out to the Obelisk:

The return to the town was in the evening when we had dinner at the Caledonian Inn - fish and chips and very nice it was too. Late afternoon, I'd popped down to the nearby Robe Brewery for a chat with the brewer owner.

Friday 9th February

Our mobile home holiday was virtually over now and all we had to do was drive to Adelaide, dump our stuff in our Air BnB home for the next 5 weeks, then return the vehicle to the local depot. There was a slight moment of crisis when we couldn't access the key for our premises - due to an error in the instructions received - but it all worked out in the end.

It was Chris' birthday and he, Kelly, Miller and Asher all joined us at our apartment for a few libations and a meal of prawns, bread, cheese - and cake, of course!

So that was our adventurous week - 17,000 kms in the air, 800 kms on the road, 130,000 steps and 83 kms of walking - whew!

Our week on the road (2)

Sunday 4th February - 18,000 steps - 10 kms

We walked all the way along the beach at Apollo Bay and round the port/marina. As well as the Great Ocean Road drive, there's a Great Ocean Walk that starts here. It's 100 kms long so there's no way we were tackling that in a day:

We spotted the Great Ocean Road Brewhouse so, once we'd done enough walking in the hot sun, we decided to have lunch and a few beers there - and it was excellent.

The facilities on the site were excellent and although we had a shower and toilet in our mobile home, we had no real need to use them. Here's the reception area at dusk:

Monday 5th February - 14,000 steps - 9 kms

On the road again - this time heading for Port Fairy, but with a few touristy stops on the way, the biggest one of which is the Twelve Apostles. Busloads of tourists here - where did they all come from? The roads were pretty quiet along the coast. I guess they must have driven here directly from Melbourne on the motorway. There were so many different bits to visit here - Gibson Steps, Loch Ard Gorge, London Bridge, Bay of Islands etc - and we popped from one to another, taking loads and loads of photos and managing to get 14,000 steps in despite it being basically a car day.

We did eventually make it to Port Fairy that day - more about that later.

Our week on the road (1)

We're in Robe just now - the final stop on our Melbourne - Adelaide drive in our mobile home. Here's the diary so far - I've tried to show different photos from those on Facebook:

Wed 31 Jan

All went well with the chauffeur drive down to Glasgow and the first flight to Dubai was a "mere" 7 hours, so no problem. The second leg to Melbourne was a bit more challenging at 13 hours - especially given the various time differences. The flight took off at 3 am Dubai time, which is 11 pm UK time. We're still game for G & T's, but the first meal they serve you is breakfast. It's another 10 hours or so before the next full meal - although you can snack any time - and that was "lunch" but by this time you're over Australia and the local time is anywhere between 8 pm and 11 pm Thursday night - but our body clocks are still at mid-morning UK time - normally a little early for alcohol, but, hey, we're on holiday - who cares?

We whisked through immigration and our bags arrived quickly so it wasn't long before we were being whisked by another Emirates chauffeur to our hotel - the Crown Metropol. By now, it's the early hours of Friday morning Melbourne time and we were tired enough to adjust easily to the local time by heading straight to bed.

Friday 2nd Feb - 29,000 steps - 16 kms

We arose at a respectable time and headed out to hit Melbourne - we only had one day here after all, so we walked and we walked - along the Yarra, over King's Domain, up to the Shrine, in to the Botanic Gardens, back across the river to the CBD - St Paul's Cathedral and finally, time for beer - one at a new place to us (Penny Blue) and the next one at a familiar haunt - James Squire's Brewhouse, where we enjoyed people watching at an open window seat, just as we had done the first time we came over to see Kelly in Australia.

Me in the shadows outside the cathedral

The trees certainly didn't need any additional heat, so why were they wearing woolly jumpers?

Saturday 3rd Feb

This was our big day - we taxi'd from our hotel to pick up our home for the next week. They were very good - detailed instructions on how everything works and soon we were on our way, but first we had to pick up some groceries at the local Coles supermarket.

The drive out of Melbourne down to Geelong is pretty standard motorway fare, but not long after that we picked up the Great Ocean Road just past Torquay. Many of the famous drives in the world describe themselves as coastal roads, but some disappoint a little as they often veer away from the sea. Not so this one - we were almost driving along the beach all the way to our first stop in Apollo Bay. Nice spot and we got hooked up pretty easily. This camping/mobile home lark is not as difficult as we feared.

More to follow.