Day 70
Monday 20 March. Overcast with showers and sunny intervals. We are up early for departure from the Ponderosa (as I have taken to calling it) and our course south to the coast.
It was a long, long drive to Warrnambool from Halls Gap: three to four hours on long, mostly straight, mostly empty roads at 100 kph (60 mph). It was a useful lesson in the size of this country, bearing in mind that we were driving over just a small part of the smallest state in Australia. It must be pretty dreary driving from, say, Melbourne to Perth at the speed limit of 110 kph (66mph). Eventually we made it to the coast and to blue sky, parking at the Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village at Warrnambool. Warrnambool turned out to be a substantially sized town on the Great Australian Bight with a small harbour and a strong maritime heritage. Hundreds of ships were wrecked in the adjacent bay before the early 20th century, some actually in the harbour, but there is no sign of it now. The good burghers of the town sensibly built a pier to shelter vessels from the westerly winds, whereupon the harbour duly silted up because of the loss of the scouring effect of the current. This just goes to show that even when you do your best to do the right thing, it can still not be good enough. There is no commercial shipping there now, and at least three wrecks are buried under the caravan park located in what was once part of the bay.
The Maritime Museum and Village were not bad. The museum was very modern and interactive, and mostly concentrated on the many wrecked sailing ships that adorned the nearby seas. Outside was a themed maritime village in a similar manner to Sovereign Hill, comprising ship’s chandlers, sail loft, rigging shop etc, but it looked a bit more artificial and none of the shops was manned; it all had a rather empty feel. On the plus side, we had the place virtually to ourselves without the usual marauding school parties, and the sun was shining. Also, it boosted my morale enormously that I could still read the signal flags hoisted on the flagstaff:
FOXTROT HOTEL MIKE VICTOR – OSCAR PAPA ECHO NOVEMBER
(I’ll let you work it out) – all those months reading the daily signal hoist outside the Cadet’s Gunroom at Dartmouth not wasted. I knew it would come in handy one day.
There was the inevitable shop, with the inevitable boomerangs and pirates’ swords, but I resisted them and, instead, bought Jane a nice leather handbag with a kangaroo on it (souvenir of Australia) that turned out to have been made in India (a souvenir of India then).
Our next stop was London Bridge. Not really a bridge, but a narrow promontory with two natural arches underneath, projecting into the quite stormy, yet turquoise, sea. Or rather it used to have two arches. In 1990, with two people on the promontory taking in the view, the landward arch collapsed without warning into the sea, leaving the seaward section as an island. By pure good fortune, the people were not on the bit that collapsed, but they ended up stranded, and I imagine there was some wailing and rending of cloth. They had to be rescued by helicopter. So what we saw of London Bridge was a sort of island with a big arch under it, now called London Arch. Rather like Marsden Rock in South Shields (before the same thing happened to that).
Finally, we arrived in Port Campbell, farther east along the coast. It is a small tourist village on a lovely tiny bay, with a nice, compact, sheltered beach. On a hot summer’s day it would have been delightful, but when we arrived the breeze was coming in, uninterrupted, from Antarctica and that did add a bit of a chill to it all. There wasn’t a lot there, other than the beach, hotels, motels and bars, and one over-priced supermarket. Our residence for the night was a motel overlooking the harbour, the sort of place where – believe it or not – I have never stayed before. The Reception was in a booth at the entrance to the car park and all the rooms, as I’m sure you know in motels, opened out onto the car park. We had a rather nice room on the first floor. It was quite large, with plenty of storage space for luggage, a table and chairs, a microwave oven, a kettle, and a toaster. There was even a jacuzzi in the bathroom, which I thought was quite luxurious, though we were unlikely to use it (the memsahib doesn’t do communal bathing – it is not kulturny). I don’t know what Laura paid for the motel, but I believe it was quite cheap.
We all sat on the balcony outside for a pre-supper glass of wine only to discover that we didn’t have a corkscrew. Now here’s an Australian thing: Derek then goes up to a stranger in the car park and asks if he has a corkscrew to lend him. ‘No’, says the bloke, ‘but I’m going up to the town and I’ll see if I can get one’. Back he comes, in due course, with a corkscrew that he has borrowed from a wine shop up the road, with the message to just drop it in when we’ve finished with it. Derek gave the bloke a glass of wine, and returned the corkscrew through the letterbox of the wine shop later. A fine example of friendly cooperation.
Finding a suitable venue for supper proved to be a challenge. The nearest recommended place was a beach bar, which had bare Formica tables, was freezing cold (air conditioning again), was blasting with music, and unwelcoming. Not a tablecloth in sight. We walked out when no one acknowledged us after five minutes. The next place, farther up the road, was at least warm and quiet, though it was still, essentially, a café (still no tablecloth or proper napkins – tut, tut). We stayed, and I had pasta marinara (good, but the squid a bit tough), while Jane had leatherjacket (a white fish on the bone, not a beetle). Derek had steak, and Laura had Asian chicken (I think the method of cooking was Asian, not the chicken). It was a good meal overall, but the service was terrible. We had to ask for the dessert menu (usually they are thrusting it at you), and when we had decided on our choice, no one came back to take the order despite us flapping our arms like semaphore students. Crazy: they missed out on $AUS44 worth of food order there, not to mention possible coffees and digestifs. They were nice enough staff, but fundamentally incompetent. Of course, we couldn’t withhold the tip, because in Australia you never leave one anyway. It was interesting to note, by the way, that the menu in this place was in Chinese as well as English, though it was very much Australian cuisine and Australian owned; as mentioned in Blog 11, there is a strong Chinese presence here (I presume tourists) and I imagine the restaurant owner could see a good market in targeting them. I still think the Chinese are casing the joint as a precursor to moving in permanently.
I had to placate Jane with a Fry’s Turkish Delight from the local store on the way back (she can get quite truculent if deprived of her post-prandial sugar fix), and it came at a very steep price: $AUS3 for a bar, with $AUS5 for a Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut. She got the Delight, but not the Nut. Keep ’em wanting that’s what I say.
Day 71
Tuesday 21 March. Torrential rain, 19ºC. Second rule of booking holiday accommodation: don’t book a motel. We were awakened at 0600 by thumps, bangs, loud foreign voices debating the philosophy of Wittgenstein in Serbo-Croat, car doors slamming, idling diesel engines, then the beep-beep-beep of reversing vans. Apparently a significant section of the Australian manual workforce was going to work, having slept at the motel overnight. Thoughtfully, they gave us another forty five minutes before coming back and repeating the process in reverse order. Heaven knows where they had been – to buy a copy of The Times perhaps? Jane was not at all happy, not having slept too well during the night anyway (all that Turkish Delight that wasn’t full of eastern promise, I expect). Derek said afterwards that the early-morning noise was characteristic of motels: you come, you sleep, you go (to which I would add, ‘…and you sod the rest of them’). It was a shame, because the room was comfortable and had a nice view. So that was Port Campbell: never really got to see it properly or to appreciate its good points.
We set off off back to Base Camp, aka Laura and Derek’s holiday home at Lorne, at 0900 in the teaming rain. I have alluded earlier to Laura’s very efficient, but very casual, style of navigation and now I can confirm an uncanny likeness to her erstwhile pen pal and former Beatle’s Fan Club Member, Jane, in terms of stubbornness in the face of plain facts.
“Turn left out of the drive”, she says, “the road just continues round”.
“It’s a car park, Laura”, says Derek.
“No, no, it’s a continuous road”, says Laura.
“OK”, says Derek, “but I still think it’s a carpark”.
We traverse what is obviously a car park (painted car bays, parked vehicles, flower beds, people diving for cover), drive the wrong way through a one-way entrance, then back round the car park again, completing two full circles. “Well it says on the map that it’s a road”, says Laura, still not believing it as we start to pull 2-g on the third pass. We did get out eventually, but she was convinced to the end that there was another way through. I’m glad that Jane and I aren’t the only ones.
Like yesterday, the journey seemed to take forever. Driving alternately through tree-lined roads in the rain or along the cliff top in the fog and rain, reminded me of, first, the Lake District on a wet Spring Bank Holiday (minus wallabies), and then Devon South Hams on an August Bank Holiday. I thought we would skip the sightseeing because of the weather, but, no, Laura was determined that we should see more spectacular cliffs despite the rain, so we donned waterproofs and went like lambs. One such stop was Loch Ard Gorge, so called because of the clipper LOCH ARD, which was wrecked there in 1878 with the loss of all hands except for an apprentice and a female passenger. It was a terrifying place, with sheer sandstone cliffs, an unforgiving sea, and two towering pillars at the mouth of a small cove with virtually no beach. I did not like the look of it at all. The apprentice apparently rescued the girl and managed to drag her to a nearby cave before climbing the cliffs and raising the alarm. How he managed to do this is an absolute mystery as, not only are the cliffs near vertical, but the area above is virtually devoid of habitation. Curiously, it didn’t put the apprentice off the sea, for he went on to become a Master Mariner, dying in Southampton at the early age of 49.
Brunch was taken at 1100 in the seaside hamlet of Apollo Bay, with the rain coming down in sheets. We found a little restaurant cum fish bar where they were just about to stop serving breakfast, but we managed to place our orders in time. The food filled a little hole after two hours on the road, and we set off replete for the final phase of the journey eastward (another two hours). An interesting feature of the Australian breakfast is the oft inclusion of spinach with the eggs and bacon. I suppose it salves the conscience to have one ‘five a day’ as you order that heart-stopping greasy cholesterol-laden food. I have loved spinach ever since I first saw Popeye: I harbour a secret belief that it will make me strong and win over Olive Oil in the cardigan, sitting next to me. Can’t say it has worked often so far, but we can all dream.
The Great Ocean Road was pretty treacherous with all the rain, compounded by rockfalls from the high landward side, which left some quite large rocks (almost boulders) on the road. It certainly was a long drive, but we finally hove into Lorne at 1300. I suppose, if you think about it, we had driven the equivalent of a journey from Bristol to Leeds on two successive days in terms of time, though thankfully without the M6 and M42 traffic.
I mentioned earlier (Blog 11) that in Australia it only rains briefly and heavily, then the sun comes out. I was misinformed. Today it has rained heavily, and non-stop since dawn. I write this at Lorne, looking out of the picture window at the deluge and the sea, the latter invisible in the mist. Never mind, we are dry and warm(ish) and the gardens need the water. We are off back to Geelong tomorrow for a few days of well-earned rest before embarking on the final stages of Laura’s planned itinerary.
Day 72
Wednesday 22 March. 19ºC overcast with showers. What a night! It continued to tip it down in torrents overnight and our bedtime was further enlivened by a scuttling noise in the walls of our bedroom. We woke Laura because we thought it might be a rat and she should know of a problem, but Laura said it was probably a possum that had worked its way into the structure of the house to get out of the rain; it is a common occurrence, apparently. Notwithstanding our refugee, we slept well for the first time in days, but we did hear the possum working its way around the bedroom behind the panelling throughout the night, front to back, floor to ceiling. Jane was frightened to get up to go to the lavatory in case she stepped on something furry and wet that had somehow managed to make its way through the wainscotting. Only in Australia.
After a brief breakfast we packed and set off for the return to Headquarters in Geelong, there to regroup, take stock, do the laundry, and prepare for another phase of travel. It was an uneventful drive along the Great Ocean Road, and only took about ninety minutes. At last, we were back at Laura and Derek’s place, which we had left nearly three weeks ago. The weather was still overcast and cool, but at least the rain had stopped.
We spent the rest of the day emptying suitcases and washing laundry. It’s nice to go travelling, but it’s oh so nice to come home. But we are off again on Friday: the moss will not be gathering on these rolling stones.
I see that the temperatures at home are still quite low, despite BST coming into force on Saturday night. I thought I saw a temperature of 15 degrees there a few days ago, but today Tring (for example) is 4 degrees. What’s going on? Get that place warmed up before we get back, do you hear? I want to step off that ship in Southampton in blazing sunshine, with Jane sans cardigan and wearing a wide-brimmed sun hat as she looks upward, like Kate Winslet in Titanic.
Laura and Derek’s son-in-law Arthur, who is a professional chef, cooked dinner for us this evening and Derek provided a bottle of his vintage 20%-proof wine to complement the meal. This was followed by a large glass of port from Derek’s port barrel (they take their wine very seriously here and Derek has a real cellar under the house, stocked neatly with wine like a French chateau). As you can imagine, a convivial time was had by all and we all staggered to bed exhausted, but burbling nicely.
Day 73
Thursday 23 March. Sunny intervals, 22ºC. Pleasant in the sunshine. Rig of the day, negative cardigans.
Oh my poor head. I think it was the port that did it. I woke at 0230 to find Jane already in the land of the conscious (not having been anywhere else) and the blare of a television set: Arthur had fallen asleep next door with the television still on. I couldn’t wake him, nor prise the controls out of his hand, so Jane and I lay there in bed, heads thumping, listening to muffled rubbish from next door. Australian TV is even worse than ours. On the plus side, we did hear the news from UK of the terrorist attack on Parliament and managed to establish reassuring contact with our son locked down in his office in Westminster. Eventually, two paracetamol cleared our heads and sent us off into a fitful sleep punctuated by garbled dialogue (“Ya gotta help me, Marshall..I’m hurt bad…”. “Ya should a thought a that when ya killed my pa….”). Arthur must have woken up at about 0630, because the noise finally stopped. We slept on until 0930 and woke somewhat jaded.
Jane had her hair washed and cut at the local boutique (no end of excitement here) and I met her for a walk into downtown Geelong. There was much head scratching when we stated the intention to walk into town:
“You want to walk?”
“Yes”.
“Walk into town from here?”
“Yes, what’s the best route?”
“Hmmm. Tricky. Wonder how you’ll get across the bypass and the railway line”.
Clearly, no-one had ever done this before. As in America, there is not a lot of urban walking here and the infrastructure isn’t geared up for it. Anyway, we were all for it. We set off, passing through three industrial estates – no footpath, only dust, stepping over disused tyres, old boilers and scrap iron – under a railway line and over a busy bypass, past the prophylactic emporium, and finally made it to the coast. There, we found a coastal path that took us into central Geelong.
It was a pleasant walk, though with a brisk headwind and sadly disfigured extensively by graffiti, and we finally made it into town after ninety minutes of adventure.
As mentioned in an earlier blog, Geelong has a very pleasant water frontage: modern, arty, lots of cafés and restaurants, and we soon settled in for lunch at The Sailor’s Rest, previously a haven for mariners seeking comfortable shore accommodation and now a pleasant eatery. We explored the city afterwards and found it to be very pleasant, with wide streets, fine buildings and lovely trees, but not very busy. I am not sure where everyone was: at work or college I presume.
The return journey was the reverse of the outward adventure, but a bit more of a slog because we were full of swordfish, chips and beer (in my case). We finally made it back at 1745, completely shattered. I estimate we had covered ten miles in total.
Off to Phillip Island tomorrow for a week, an island in Port Phillip Bay near Melbourne where Laura has another time share flat. More on that next blog.
"A Very Vintage Chap..." 