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.