Victoria - It's Best & Worst(?)

On leaving Shellharbour, we realised we were in for a very long day/night. The day started off with us stopping off in Bateman's Bay and meeting up with an army mate of Peter's and his wife for lunch on the waterfront - oh what a lovely spot and the weather was just great, particularly as we managed to sit out of the wind.

This is the view we had from our table at the café on the waterfront.

Some 2 hours later, we were back on the road, feeling as if we had just enjoyed something special with this great couple.

Now it was time to hit the road again and head down to a really beautiful place called Eden - our night's stop.  Not long after we arrived and set up, Trina, our daughter-in-law, her mother, Barbara, and our grand daughter Emily, arrived to share the night with us. Unfortunately Matt, our son was in Melbourne on business and could not join us. Trina had booked a cabin in the caravan park we were staying in which was really great.

It was decided that we would go out for dinner to the Fisherman's Club and were quite impressed that their courtesy bus would come to the caravan park to pick us all up - that way we could all have a drink and not worry about driving back to the c/park.

Prior to setting off again the following morning, we all enjoyed a breakfast at the Wharfside café down on the wharf at Eden - very enjoyable.

From Eden it was a reasonably short drive to the border of Victoria, and we continued on with a stop off at Cann River for morning tea - at a bakery of course, the only places to have morning tea breaks.

I have to say that the drive through this part of Victoria is very pretty including seeing a few trees that still had their autumn colouring.

We continued on through Orbost and onto Lakes Entrance where we stopped for lunch. It was really chilly and Pete went off for a walk whilst I started to organise lunch in the van. What a great surprise when he came back with hot chips - oh yummmm ..... a hot chip buttie!! Goodness it is such a long time since I have had one of those. Both of us were sitting there with big smiles on our faces thoroughly enjoying such a treat.

From here, we continued on towards Traralgon for our nights stay. Peter decided he wanted to be fresh to tackle the run down to the Mornington Peninsula through busy outer Melbourne traffic.

This decision proved to be a correct one, and we had a very good run down to our night's stay at Mornington. After having a late lunch, we decided to go for a drive down to Sorrento to familiarise ourselves with where we had to go the following morning to board the ferry to take us (and our rig) across Port Phillip Bay from Sorrento to Queenscliff, over the other side of the bay near Geelong. On the return trip back to our Mornington night's stop, the weather took a decidedly bad turn. I had a couple of loads of washing to do, so wandered across to the laundry, only to find half way through my chores (can't get out of those even when you are on holidays can you?) it started to rain - bother. It was OK in one way, because I had intended to use the dryers, but how was I to get my dry washing back to our van. Thankfully it eased long enough for me to scurry to the van. I will also admit that this is the first time (I believe) that we have put the heater on as soon as we have parked up. It turned really, really cold.

We decided to leave the caravan park at 6am the next morning as we had approx. a 45 min. drive down to Sorrento and we needed to be at the wharf about an hour before our ferry was to leave. Oh my goodness, what a horrible morning it turned out to be. The rain was all but coming sideways and both the car and van were being buffeted and the bay had plenty of white caps. Hmmm ..... looked like we were in for a not so nice crossing.

Here we go, driving onto the ferry, then it was a short set of stairs to go up to the lounge area for a nice cuppa to warm us up whilst the ferry took off on it's 45 minute journey.

Surprisingly, the crossing was quite good, and we were able to continue on our way on perhaps the worst day of travelling that we have ever en-counted. It was cold, windy, wet, and horribly miserable. The temperature all day did not exceed 11 deg. c - it is a long time since I have been s-o cold! We travelled on 'til we reached Hamilton which is not too far south of the Grampian Mountains in central west Victoria. 

After setting up for the night, we headed into Hamilton for a look around, and I raced into Target department store to purchase another set of thermal long johns and long sleeve spencer. When we returned to the van, the heater was the first thing to be switched on after Peter connected the power.

We have bunkered down for the night, and hope that the weather will be kinder to us as we will continue our trip west into South Australia tomorrow.

For now though, it is goodnight from Hamilton