October marked our first trip to Melbourne and a sweeping drive through the state of Victoria. We were graced with back-to-back three-day holiday weekends so I arranged for a business trip to our consulate in Melbourne over the four work days between long weekends. Instead of flying we opted to drive our car the approximate 800 kilometers to Melbourne. We planned to drive down one way and back up along the coast which is a little longer distance. The hardest planning for these trips is in consuming all the food in the refrigerator that might spoil while we are away.
We started our trip Saturday morning, October 1, and, as is the case in Canberra, we had to head north in order to go south. We took the highway north to Yass to connect to the major Hume highway which runs between Sydney and Melbourne. The weather was nice and sunny as spring was in the air. At Yass we headed southwest and stopped for coffee and gasoline nine miles out of Gundagai at the statue of the Dog in the Tuckerbox. This is about an Australian folk song written, probably, in an old pub that was once located nine miles out of Gundagai. The sanitized version of the song has the dog sitting in the tuckerbox which spoilt the ox driver's food but the other version is that the dog shat in the tuckerbox. Tucker is the Australian word for food and the tuckerbox is where the food was stored. Anyway, a statue is set up nine miles out of Gundagai and several gasoline stations are located at this roadside park. It's been turned into a minor tourist attraction and is on most detailed maps of the area.
After crossing the Victorian border, near the town of Wangaratta we cut off to the little town of Milawa, a food lover's delight with cheese factory, mustard factory, restaurants and Brown Brothers winery. We stopped at the mustard factory for a small purchase then on to the winery. Since our last visit here, Brown Brothers has opened up an Epicurean Center where one can get gourmet meals and wine samples that they suggest go with each meal. We both opted for the sample of three entrees and three wines. One was an avocado paté surrounded with smoked salmon, one was fresh asparagus and the other was a goat cheese tart with mustard crust. It was an excellent meal and afterwards we went to the tasting area and bought a case of wine to carry home.
We headed back to the Hume highway and southwest until we exited at Violet Town and headed west on backroads through Murchison and Rushworth to our stop at Bendigo. Bendigo is in the gold fields section of Victoria and has gold mines that were worked up until the 1950's. There are several nice old buildings, statues and fountains in the town center. We checked into our motel then walked around the town, stopping at the pretty Shamrock Hotel for an okay dinner. Clouds and rain moved in during the evening and we were awakened in the night to lightning and thunder, something we haven't had for a long, long time in Canberra.
Springtime comes grudgingly to Victoria. Many Englishmen who migrated to Australia settled in Victoria because the climate is similar to England's. It is generally cooler and wetter than the rest of Australia but, as we noticed, it is also a lot greener.
We woke up Sunday morning to a cool, damp day and after breakfast headed to Bendigo Pottery, one of the oldest pottery plants in Australia. We bought just a few items then drove to Tannery Pottery but didn't see anything we liked there. Bendigo is home to several potteries as the clay in the soil is ideal. We pressed on to the small gold mining town of Maldon where we stopped for cappuccino and a walkabout. Maldon railway station has an old steam engine that offers rides on Sundays but they start in the afternoon and we didn't have the spare time. The town is very pretty, however, and hasn't changed much in the last hundred years. We drove through Castlemaine, another pretty town with great architecture, then on to Hepburn Springs for a quick visit to the spa. We drove to another nice mining town, Daylesford, where we stopped at an ice cream shop called Lost in the Fifties. It was fun with an old jukebox and posters of Elvis, Marilyn, and James Dean. What initially caught my eye was a 1955 Chevy parked out front. We drove on to Ballarat and checked into our motel. Ballarat is considered the center of the gold fields and, yes, is another pretty, old town with interesting buildings. It is a fairly good sized town compared to the others and has extensive suburbs.
We went directly to Sovereign Hill, a reproduction of an 1860's mining village. Much like Williamsburg, employees walk around or ride horses in period costumes. There are British redcoats, too. It is very well done with eating places, hotels, and shops of the period. We took a tour of an old gold mine which was interesting. One section of Sovereign Hill has a place you can pan for gold and a tent city which I imagine looks fairly authentic. It also had the Chinese section with their shops and temples. Chinese came to the gold mines here just like California or the Yukon. After several hours here we went to the Gold Museum nearby which had information on gold, gold mining, coins and much more. It was good and had over $7 million worth of gold on display in nuggets and coins. The "friendly stranger" nugget, at over 7 kilos one of the world's biggest, was found nearby. Our motel was located across from the stockade, where Australia's closest conflict approaching rebellion occurred. Several miners (mostly Irish) tried to secede and fought a two day battle with British redcoats over mining conditions. They lost. Badly.
Sunday evening is a difficult time to find any good restaurants open in Australia. We walked for a long while and finally found a small Italian restaurant open called Assunta's. The food was excellent with large servings but the interesting item about this place was that it was a shrine to Elvis. His pictures and mementos were everywhere. I asked our young waiter about this and he said his mother adores Elvis. I mentioned that his mother must be about our age and he agreed but didn't offer to bring her out of the kitchen for an introduction. Maybe he's embarrassed by it all?
Monday, October 3, is a holiday (Labor Day) but only in Canberra and New South Wales. Victoria has their Labor Day at another time so we had the day off while the rest of Victoria worked. In Canberra and NSW this week is also the last week of spring vacation while Victoria students went back to school today. All of which made for little traffic on the highway. We drove back into Ballarat and took the scenic drive around Lake Wendouree where the botanical gardens are located and some of Ballarat's better houses. We headed south and west to Skipton then took deserted backroads to Camperdown where we had coffee and bought gasoline. Further south and we made it to Port Campbell and the Port Campbell National Park. Here we saw the Great Australian Bight, the part of the ocean directly south of Australia. Also here we connected with the Great Ocean Highway which winds along the coast known as the shipwreck coast.
The wind always blows hard here and the sea is dangerous. There are almost no safe beaches to swim along this coast from Warrnambool to Apollo Bay. We had the wind all right but nice sunshine as well, which is rare. We headed east towards Melbourne and our first stop was to view the Blowhole (doesn't every coast have one!) and the Loch Ard Gorge. The scenery is beautiful and the coast rugged. Further on we stopped to view and photograph what is considered Australia's second most popular geographical site after Ayer's Rock, the Twelve Apostles. I think there are only eleven but it's the name given to rock outcrops that have been eroded away from the coastline. We probably used up a roll of film just on the Twelve Apostles.
We drove on to Apollo Bay, a pretty little seaside town, arriving in time for lunch. This was planned as we had a recommendation from friends at work. We found Chris's Beacon Point restaurant high up in the hills with a great view overlooking Bass Strait, the body of water between the mainland and Tasmania. And the food was excellent to match the view. The owner, Chris Talihmanidis, had just returned from his native Greece and he came out to meet and talk with us. I had fish while Rita had Greek-style prawns. With starters, dessert and wine the lunch extended to over two hours.
After a rest we drove along the Great Ocean highway arriving in Torquay where we had motel reservations. Torquay was all right but not as nice as the guide book description. It's the premier surfing town of Victoria but not much was happening this time of the year. And the beach didn't look all that good. It did have a decent little Mexican restaurant however. We didn't think we would have room for dinner but later on decided we could handle a take-away order of tacos and tostedas to eat in our motel room.
We got an early start Tuesday morning even though we woke to a steady drizzle. We took about one and a half hours driving into Melbourne, checked into the Park Royal Hotel and walked across the street to the US Consulate to begin work. Rita did an excellent job of navigating us to the hotel in a strange, large city that still has old trams running down most major streets. One of my staff, Adam Petocz, had flown down from Canberra that morning and was at the consulate only minutes before me. We went to meet the Consul General for a briefing of what we intended to do in our four days then went about installing PCs, printers and printer share devices. Rita rested up in the room and became acquainted with the hotel surroundings. The hotel and consulate are on St. Kilda Road in a nice part of the city. It originally was the home of the wealthy and some of the mansions are still standing. Unfortunately, the area was zoned commercial so many nice mansions were torn down for office buildings and others were turned into offices.
After work, Rita and I jumped on a tram and asked the conductor how to use them. He was friendly and helpful. With our map we made it into the town center (not far away) and took a short walking tour around central Melbourne. We had heard about Lygon Street and were getting hungry so we walked the several blocks there. Lygon Street is Melbourne's premier dining location. Years ago it was mostly Italian family restaurants. They are still there along with several others. Now there are Thai, Chinese, Malaysian and several other types of restaurants for several blocks. The amazing surprise to Rita and me was barkers outside on the sidewalk trying to entice diners into their restaurants. It was like the strip joints in the French Quarter of New Orleans only these were restaurants. Apparently competition is fierce, especially on a Tuesday night, as some of the barkers were offering free bottles of wine with the meal.
Having no particular restaurant recommended on this street, we chose to eat at Il Vicolo which appeared to have a large group of locals dining. We weren't disappointed at all. The food was good, starting with bowls of minestrone soup; they took the chill off the cold, damp night. Rita had pasta with veal and asparagus while I had risotto with lamb and mushrooms. I followed with an excellent chocolate mousse and espressos for both of us. We had to walk. We walked a long way back to a tram stop via Chinatown.
Wednesday was back to work for me while Rita took a Gray Line tour of Melbourne that included most highlights plus a short boat tour on the Yarra River. That night Rita and I walked to a neighborhood Indian restaurant called Bedi's which claimed restaurants in New Delhi, Madras, Bombay and Goa as well. We had some of the best Indian food we've ever tasted in a restaurant. We started by sharing an entree that had a sampling of all their starters. Chicken tandoori was great as well as barbecued lamb and vegetable samosas. For our mains, Rita had vegetable vindaloo which was spiiiiiiicy! I had lamb in a mild yogurt curry sauce with cashews and almonds. It was excellent. We like beer with our Indian food so we indulged in the local Victoria Bitters lager. Again, we had to walk back. We needed to walk.
Thursday Adam and I accomplished most of everything we wanted to in Melbourne. Rita took the tram to Victoria markets, a large, outdoor, covered marketplace that sell mostly produce and meats but lots of other things as well. She said she heard many foreign languages in the market. Melbourne is supposed to have the largest Greek community outside of Athens. It also has large Italian, Serb and Croatian contingents as well as others. She also visited the Melbourne Zoo which has a reputation for their gorilla house. It was a smaller zoo than she expected but still nice. She was impressed with the gorillas and the pool where she could see a platypus swimming up close. But she was mostly impressed with the butterfly house where hundreds of Australian butterflies are loose in a temperate building. She also visited the Old Melbourne Gaol which had death masks of various villains including Ned Kelly. They also had one of Ned's iron suits of armor that he used in his holdups. Ned Kelly was hanged in this jail.
In the evening Adam joined us and we all caught the tram into town. First we toured the Melbourne Central building with the old shot tower in the middle. The shot tower was used to make shot or bullets by dropping the metal down a long shaft where it formed into spheres. The building was an historic monument so the new office building and shopping complex was built around it with a dome put over the old building. We walked to a recommended restaurant, Marchetti's Latin, on Lonsdale Street. It was very chic and we had excellent food. Rita had gnocchi with veal while I had veal saltimbocca. I had a coffee/chocolate soufflé for dessert that was a bit disappointing after waiting 30 minutes. We walked back through Chinatown and caught a tram back to our hotel. We had good timing as the sky broke loose with rain and hail just as we made it back.
Friday morning we had more hail and stormy weather. Rita packed suitcases while I did some last minute work at the consulate and told people good-bye. We got away from the hotel about 11:30 and drove south through the suburb of St. Kilda. We took the coastal road that went through the suburbs of Mordialloc and Edithvale to Carrum where we headed east towards the South Gippsland highway. We stopped at a deli for a quick lunch and pressed on southeasterly. At the town of Koo-Wee-Rup (black fish swimming in local aboriginal language) we stopped for gasoline. We drove to our bed & breakfast, Rothsaye on Lovers Walk, in the town of Cowes on Phillip Island.
The island is small and we set about to explore it. First we drove to the eastern tip of the island to view the Nobbies, small, rocky islands with fur seals and bird life. It was extremely windy but I took a short hike to view the gulls and mutton birds up close. The gulls were hatching and I saw some baby seagull chicks. Next we drove to the koala sanctuary on the island. We hiked around the trees and spotted ten koalas in the trees. The highlight was seeing one with a baby (called a joey) clinging to her as she climbed up higher.
We debated on going to see the highlight of Phillip Island, the penguin parade. We had seen fairy penguins at Montague Island about a month before and didn't relish the idea of getting out into the cold wind to view these. But we "rugged up" as the Australians say and braved out at sundown to see more penguins. We were cold and damp but did see lots of penguins come ashore as the sun set. It was funny and looked like a scene out of a war movie where the marines wade ashore to attack. The tide was out so the penguins were reluctant to make the mad dash. But in scattered groups of about 15 to 20, each group would finally get the nerve to run together for the sand dunes and get to their nests. While we sat on concrete bleachers and a park guide announced their moves over a public address system! It began to rain hard and we all made a mad dash for our cars and buses. It was a bizarre sight.
We have no photos to show you of the penguins as flash photography is not allowed. I don't know why - the penguins waddled right past us and some Japanese tourists used flash anyway which didn't seem to bother the penguins. Maybe the park wants a monopoly on penguin photos to sell tourists. Anyway, we decided that we enjoyed our penguin viewing at Montague Island better as the group was less than 20 there. We had a chance there to meet the penguins on a personal basis. Phillip Island was just a mad cocktail party! And the penguins wore their tuxedos!
We made it to the Jetty restaurant for a warm seat by the fireplace. We had an okay seafood meal while watching the storm outside. We beat the crowd, too, as several buses of Japanese tourists stopped there to eat before returning to Melbourne.
Saturday morning we slept in late and enjoyed our B & B. It was very nice and private with complete kitchen and a back door to Lover's Walk. The trail led to the beach, one of the few beaches on Phillip Island's north coast with no road alongside. It was cloudy and cool; too cold to go swimming but we thought it would be a nice place to return to in the heat of summer. We checked out and drove to the town of Rhyll on Phillip Island. It had pretty views of the bay and a nice little harbor. We continued on to San Remo and headed south on the Bass Highway to Wonthaggi and Inverloch. Then we took backroads with great views of Wilsons Promontory through Tarwin Middle and Buffalo.
We headed south into Wilsons Promontory National Park or as it's called locally, The Prom. It is an isthmus of granite mountains sticking out into the ocean and is the southern-most point on the Australian mainland. The scenery is beautiful and reminded us of Arcadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine. There are several little bays with small beaches. The ocean was kicking up huge waves as the wind was fierce. We drove to the park headquarters at Tidal River where there were dozens of crimson rosellas waiting to be hand fed. As I walked to the snack bar, several swooped down to sit on my hand and shoulder while Rita had some sitting on her head. They were aggressive and not afraid at all. After a quick sandwich we drove back to take a quick hike to Squeaky Beach. The sand was white and squeaked as we walked on it. The Prom has several good hiking trails and one could easily spend a week here in good weather. Another place to return to!
We headed back north to Foster and the South Gippsland highway. This area of Victoria is called Gippsland. We headed east through pretty country and the village of Welshpool. We took a side trip to see historic (1841) Port Albert, a pretty little fishing village. Heading north we passed through Yarram and changed onto the Hyland highway to Traralgon where we stopped for gasoline. At the suggestion of someone at the Melbourne consulate, we headed north and east on backroads through Glengarry, Heyfield, Tinamba, Maffra to Stratford which is on the river Avon. The drive was scenic with mountains in the near distance and pretty towns, each claiming to be the winner of Victoria's "Tidiest Town" contest in recent years. They were all tidy but Maffra won our choice. At Stratford we connected with the Princes highway which goes all around Australia except for a short distance between Darwin and Cairns. We headed east to Bairnsdale and at the suggestion of the same person, cut off the main highway to stay at Metung.
Metung is a pretty fishing village that is apparently just getting known. The harbor seems to have recently expanded and has many big sailboats. The town is pretty with a new motel and restaurant. We stayed at the Moorings, the new motel and serviced apartments situated on the water with their own piers. The motel rooms were full so we stayed in an apartment which was more than we needed. That evening we had another great meal at the only restaurant in town called Morcomb's of Metung. Rita had prawns while I had a local fish called a duckfish. It was sort of like a flounder but had a strange, narrow mouth and long dorsal fins. And it tasted very nice. Staying in Metung felt like we were staying on an island.
Sunday we headed east after a leisurely breakfast to the town of Lakes Entrance. This is a resort area with several lakes and inlets similar to the Texas coast between Houston and Corpus Christi. We pressed on through forests and timber towns of Orbost and Cann River. For two or three hours there was little scenery here but forests. Okay for a while but boring for that long. We stopped in Cann River for a cappuccino and were disappointed that it was made with instant coffee. But this is the boondocks! We decided that we were ready to go home today and not stay away another night. We were within striking distance of home and had seen most of the south coast of New South Wales.
As we neared the NSW border we noticed a considerable change in weather. It was warm and sunny again. We drove around the pretty port town of Eden, which used to be a whaling port, and had lunch. We drove to Pambula and detoured to Merimbula, another pretty resort town. We stopped for ice cream and stretched our legs. Then we took a scenic backroad to Tathra, another pretty beach town. We parked and walked to the historic Tathra Wharf. We didn't see any whales but were assured that there was a whale in the bay just last week. All we saw was jellyfish and fishermen trying to hook anything. But the views were nice. We finally headed to Bega, Bemboka and up Brown Mountain. In Nimmitabel we stopped to get meat pies to take home. We had been advised before that the little cafe in Nimmitabel has some of the best meat pies in Australia and we couldn't argue with that. We pressed on through Cooma and arrived home about 6:00 PM. A shower and our own bed felt good.
We traveled over 2500 kilometers or about 1500 miles during the week. Our car turned 30,000 kilometers on the trip. Monday was a holiday, Columbus Day, so we had the chance to sleep in late, unpack, grocery shop, and relax. Instead of counting sheep now to go to sleep, I count penguins.
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