Catherine’s Blog

194/365 clink

Originally uploaded by LPM

Road trips, love them. The last great one I did was with Anthony in South Africa. I wanted to show Rikard Australia and I thought that a road trip was a good way to show off the country. The Great Ocean Road seemed to be a good choice.
Saturday morning we packed and headed off to Melton to drop stuff off to Natalie and then over land to the Geelong Hwy.
Once again they go and build something whilst I am away and that is the Geelong by-pass. It is a very nice piece of road and makes the trip much better, thanks to Arnie for letting me know of the new road lay out. We headed through Torquay and then checking out Bells Beach. We walked down and strolled along the beach. The sand is black and yellow and the swell was low. There was a photo shoot at the other end of the beach, it was beach and summer wear. The models were looking very chilly.
It was back in the car and off to Anglesea and as far as I concerned the start of the Great Ocean Road. I had not really told Rikard about the road and as we climbed he grew more excited. For those who don’t know, The Great Ocean Road runs along the coast line, literally, because there are mountains going into the sea and the road has been cut into the edge of the mountain. You have this amazing view of the Southern Ocean as you drive through the forest and beach houses. We stopped number of times to take photos.
The self portrait was taken at one of the look outs using the newest piece of photo equipment, the bean bag! It is fantastic bit of kit, helps on uneven surfaces and stopping the lens pulling the camera forward. Genius.
We stopped in Lorne for a coffee, well Rikard had a coffee. Then more hairpin turns and sweeping vistas before arriving in Apollo bar. The hotel was straight of the 1970’s but it was cheap so I can not complain too much. The mink animal print blanket did cause a large amount of merriment.
For dinner we went to the Apollo Bay hotel. The food was pretty good but the pork belly stuffing was very dry. Rikard’s smoked chicken pasta was very good but we ate too much for sweets. We went into the public bar and Rikard was astounded to find two games of football playing on the televisions.
Sunday morning we were up and the sun was shining brightly as we set to Lavers Hill. We drove into the Forest with glimpses of very green paddocks. We stopped to check out the forest before emerging again out onto the coast. We stopped at Castle cove for another photo. It is hard to believe this is taken in winter but it was pretty cold and blustery.
We stopped in Lavers Hill for a late breakfast of a date scone for Rikard and astounding fruit toast with lashings of butter for me. Good food for the next part of the journey to Port Campbell to met with the parental units who felt it very important to give Rikard a taste of Australia. In the form of a BBQ. Arnie did have enough meat for a small army, this is traditional, he also cooked the most wonderful crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside potatoes. Nom nom.
We all went to see the 12 Apostles of which there are only nine standing. We intermingled with many tourists and generally gawped and Rikard grinned, a lot. Joyce and Arnie headed home and we checked Loch Ard Gorge.
Then it was a slightly hair raising trip in the dark to Warrnambool as it was dark and the sun had just set, prime time for collecting a hood ornament. (Kangaroo) We found our hotel but were disappointed to discover the pool was not in use. It was a Monday night so we quickly realised there was going to be an issue with finding a place to eat. We found a late opening restaurant but after the huge BBQ we only had starters and sweets. We also had a lot of the lovely Spikey Moses beer.
Monday was very relaxed, we slept in, we went into a time warp for breakfast. It was a very old fashioned cafe and we had steak sandwiches with the lot for breakfast. It was really quite nice, a real blast from the past that was tasty. The only down side was the instant coffee and Rikard suffered through it. It was a gentle exit, go lost and then wandered to see if there were any whales, I found that the waves produced rainbows so it was a photography moment. No whales though. We waited and then headed to Port Fairy.
We trundled in and parked the car and wandered around the main street on the hunt for a real coffee for Rikard. We found a lovely cafe and ate a real homemade lemon slice along with coffee and hot chocolate. We walked around the town some more before coming up to the Caledonian Hotel, the longest licensed hotel in Victoria. We thought that is could be closed until the bar keep beckoned us into the very country pub. There were two blokes at the bar and one behind the bar. We had a pot each and the bar keep told some truly terrible jokes and the locals watched the horse racing. It was really fun and the bar keep explained the raffles including the meat tray. They have a number of different fund raising events and very old school feel.
We wandered to Griffiths island and took into the views and watched the fisherman. Then back to Warrnambool to see if the whales had turned up. No.
We ate at the Warrnambool hotel where we amused the wait staff with Rikard translating the menu into Swedish, so now I know the important words, chocolate and pie! We had a lovely meal and adjourned to the bar until they kicked us out.
Tuesday we began the drive back but overland this time, stopping in at Timboon for brunch and picking up local whiskey.
We arrived back in Melbourne to be greeted by a happy cat and quickly got changed to head in to see the Tim Burton Exhibition. This is an astounding display into Tim’s mind with a huge amount of things from his own archives. Very cool.
The next section was surprise for Rikard, I have booked us on to the tram car restaurant. Old fashioned trams decked out into moving restaurants. Rikard was very surprised! It was a lovely time trundling around the tram tracks in south Melbourne!

We finished the evening there and then headed off to watch the flame displays at the Crown casino and the cocktails in a lovely bar on exhibition Street.
Thus ends the road trip.
The next day I went to work and we met after work to go see the European masters exhibition at the Gallery after doing the much needed Great Hall roof and the water wall photos.
We had mucked up our reading of the flight and Rikard was leaving 2am instead of 2pm. We said our good byes and there are some tentative plans in place for him to come back for another visit.