Long time, no blog

Random Musings

Jeez – we are slacking here down under. Over 2 months since we’ve posted anything. We haven’t really done anything that on its own would be considered “blog worthy”, but we have compiled quite a few smaller adventures that when combined reach that lofty threshold.

So, here’s what we’ve been up to since our road trip to South Australia.

Beach Day

We whinge quite a bit about the “summer” weather here in Melbourne.  But finally we came across a day (February 4th to be specific) where the Melbourne weather was suitable for a trip to the beach.  So, we packed up the Esky, strapped our backpack chairs on and headed to the train station.

Public transport to the beach!

It was easy to find a spot on the beach and just relax.  Getting in the water was even enjoyable. We even observed someone using a wooden spoon to put suntan lotion on their own back, so we’ve got that going for us, which is nice.

On our way back home we decided to stop and see the famed “Brighton Beach Boxes” – that people pay upwards of $300K for.

They are neat to look at, and probably wonderful to have, but probably not worth that amount of money on a beach that has (in my humble opinion) maybe 10-15 good beach days a year.

International T20 Cricket @ the MCG

I think we’ve mentioned before that the T20 version of cricket is our favorite – since it fits into our 3 hour attention spans.  The other versions are “one day” which lasts about 8 hours and “test cricket” which played over 5 days.  No thanks!  We’ve been to a few KFC Big Bash League (what a name!) T20 games, but never to a proper international match.  So, when the Aussie international T20 team was going to play against Sri Lanka in Melbourne we wrangled up some mates and headed down to the ‘G.

Ultimately the Australian team lost on the last ball, which was sad, but very exciting to watch.  Of course, this being Melbourne, just a short time after our beach day it was practically a winter day once the sun went down and the wind tunnel effect of the ‘G picked up.

White Night

An annual event in Melbourne is White Night.  They light up all sorts of buildings with art and it is pretty neat.  Note we are wearing fleeces in the summer. It runs from sunset to sunrise, but being a couple of oldsters we made it out and back home before midnight.

Yarra Valley Beer Tour

For my birthday, friends of mine gave me a voucher for a beer tour.  Did you know we like beer?!  We met a small bus near the main Melbourne train station at 10am and headed about an hour to the northeast of Melbourne to the Yarra Valley.  Us and 9 new friends headed to various breweries and cideries to try all sorts of beers for the next 6 hours.

Ashlee’s 40th

Our friend Ashlee celebrated her 40th birthday in style by throwing an 80s themed birthday bash at a bar.  We’ve mentioned before how Aussies take their dress up parties seriously.  This was no exception.   It was a blast and I had an excuse to wear my fluoro.

Formula 1 Grand Prix

Every year, the Formula One season kicks off with a race in Melbourne.  We’ve never been to any sort of car race before and this one was a 15 minute walk from our house, so we went!  The cars are fast and loud.  We saw the F1 cars do practice laps and the V8 Supercars in a race.

F1 Car
V8 Supercar

That should about catch you up what we’ve been up to for the last few months.  I promise the next few months will be much more rewarding for blog lovers.  Our friend Jen is popping in for a visit so we’re meeting her on arrival in Sydney (in less than a week!) before she makes her way to Melbourne (via Cairns) just as I’m leaving to go to the US to visit family and play golf. Stay tuned!

G’Day SA

Travel

The Australia Day public holiday was on a Thursday this year, so Sara and I decided to take our first extended road trip!  We were off to South Australia – specifically Kangaroo Island and then the state capital – Adelaide.

This is where we went.

We left on Wednesday night and made our way about 300kms to the Victorian town of Horsham, where we stayed in a old motel.  During our drive we received a call where they gave us our room number and told us the key would be under the mat.  The next morning when we checked out it was a public holiday, so no one was in the office so we just dropped the key in a key drop and hit the road.  So trusting in the country!

Where’s the steering wheel?

For most of the trip the road looked like the above.  A two lane highway with train tracks next to it and gum trees as far as the eye could see.

We had a scheduled ferry ride to Kangaroo Island at 7pm, so even after covering the last 500km of our trip, we had some time to kill, so we decided to stop in a town near the ferry terminal – Victor Harbor.   They had a nice waterfront area including the first horse drawn tram I’d ever seen.  We did a nice hike and got a late lunch / early dinner before heading over to the ferry.

Arriving late-ish into Kangaroo Island, we just headed straight to our hotel to relax and get ready for a long day of exploring the next day.

The next morning dawned and we set of for the other side of the island – Flinders Chase National Park.  It was about an hour and a half drive.  We made a mistake of using google maps – which tends to route you on the most “direct” route.  This was a problem since the most direct route involved unsealed (dirt) roads.  They were not kind to the Yaris and limited us to about 60kph.  Luckily we were only on them for about 9km.  Lesson learned – the tourist maps we had noted which roads were paved and we stuck to those from that point forward.

We arrived at the park and purchased our visitor pass, got some advice and also got breakfast at the visitor center.  Then we set off for a nice hike with stunning coastal views from Weirs Cove over to Admirals Arch.

Selfie at Weirs Cove
Coastline
Admirals Arch

After that hike we got back into the car to see the other main attraction at the park – “Remarkable Rocks” – they did not disappoint.  I decided to ride one and Sara did a really poor job of hiding.

Giddy up.
Peek a boo
Rock

After all the bushwalking and assorted adventuring, it seemed like a good time to head to the beach.  So, using our map, we found the only paved road that went to the north shore of the island – and to the town of Stokes Bay.  There we found the beach after a short trail through some rocks.  We relaxed and read our books and generally enjoyed the great day.

A tranquil bay

After exploring Kangaroo Island, the next day we headed back to the mainland via the ferry.  We stopped at the local pub in Cape Jervis and luckily just beat the 100s of bikies that had come to celebrate the holiday weekend.

Bikies

After some nice fish sandwiches, it was off to Adelaide for the evening.  As per our typical MO, we found a local microbrewery and enjoyed some fresh beers.

Beer!

We spent most of the afternoon / evening just walking around and exploring the city.  The next morning we went for a run along the river before getting in the car for the 8 hour trip back home.  Luckily there were a few points of interest on the way home.

Pink lake
Giant Koala

We acquired some good knowledge for future Australian road trips.  We now know we can’t rely on our experience driving around the USA when driving in Australia.  First, we learned that when you sort of need fuel, you should get it, because the servos are few and far between and not necessarily open 24 hours.  Also, food options are similarly limited  – not plentiful and not always open.   We will put these lessons to use on our next road trip.