Melbourne and Beyond

Driving into Melbourne was a little like a "home coming" as we had both spent part of our lives here. We stayed at Craigeburn on the northern side of the city so we could be closer to meet and greet the newest member of the family, baby Siena, Amanda and Simon's second contribution to the every growing hoard of Grandchildren.

 

The most memorable part of our stay at the holiday park was the big storm that hit one afternoon during our three week stay. I sat on the bed hugging one terrified little pooch while the thunder, lightening and wind raged around us. 100 ml (4 inches on the old scale) of rain fell and huge hail stones in the space of one hour. Thanks to the deluge, we actually had river frontage as the water flooded the road in front of the van. There was no damage unlike other parts of town and the water eventually cleared away and we all dried out. While at Craigeburn we celebrated Christmas (a few weeks early - any excuse) with dear friends, Neville and Colleen who had returned from Vietnam for a holiday.

Beautiful Victoria

Ade took me on a tour of rural parts of the state I hadn't visited before and where he used to live at Rochford. We were going to visit Hanging Rock but due to the public coffers needing a substantial donation we decided to hold on to our money and invest in food instead. As it turned out this was a wise move; lunch at Woodend turned out to be another taste sensation. Not just the pies, (Queenscliff is still the best) but the local bakery happened to be the winner of the 'Best Vanilla Slice' Competition for 2010 - who would have thought! Let me tell you they deserve the title. Think we died and went to heaven!

One of the highlights of the day was to drive over Mt Macedon which was completely devastated in the 1984 Ash Wednesday fires and today has been replaced by the most magnificent gardens hiding equally magnificent mansions, many owned by the elite of Melbourne's society. The glimpses of stately homes behind walled fences was worth seeing but having been through those '84 fires myself you wouldn't catch me within cooee of that much undergrowth in Victoria's summer months. While we were on this side of the city, we also visited with fellow travellers Col and Kay, who we met in Derby, Western Australia, this time for a wonderful lunch at their lovely home at Heathcote in the country north of the city.
Our Christmas Celebration

From Craigeburn we moved to Emerald in the Dandenong Ranges to stay with our dear friends Marg and Trev over the Christmas and New Year season and count ourselves lucky to have such generous and hospitable people in our lives. We had the best time catching up with so many friends and being in a real home was the icing on the cake. Family from Brisbane, namely Sally and Beren and their little man, Xavier as well as Stacey joined us during our time here giving us even more reason to celebrate.

Westgage Bridge from Docklands

We had a wonderful meal and catch up with our friends Howard and Allison at their new Docklands unit.  The setting sun provided a stunning backdrop to views from the balcony across the Westgate Bridge and the city.  Another day we had an outing to Warburton where we took a long walk through the amazingly tall tree fern forest of the Yarra Ranges National Park.
Yarra Ranges National Park

It was time to move on from Melbourne and begin the journey east along the remainder of the Victorian coastline to New South Wales.




We had every intention of staying on Phillip Island for a few days but it wasn't meant to be - the island was totally booked out for the holiday season leaving us with another reason to come back!