Saturday, October 11, 2008

Bunnings saves the day (again)

Seven bloody AM this morning. The Christmas eve crash-house was cleaned up. VERY noisy and my much needed sleep was ended abruptly. Not happy.

We received a letter from my aunty Kitty. Pleasant surprise. It was a good read although sometimes hard to decipher.

The car needed a wash badly so we took it down to the car wash.

Supermarket afterwards.

Tony was mounting a new range hood (cooking fan for above the stove). He needed some flexible duct pipe for this and claimed to have been to every hardware store and nobody had it. When asked if he went to Bunnings he gave us his standard answer "Nah, Bunnings is shit". So I called up my friends at Bunnings and they told me they had the duct pipe. A lot of other people were at Bunnings.

Tony was happy with the duct pipe so I made sure to let him know where I got it from *grin*

Today was a warm day. It's promising. I think it reached 29C today.

Friday, October 10, 2008

The Great Ocean Road, part 2.

Near Mt. Gambier there is a lake, created by a volcanic eruption about 4800 years ago. Every November, the water turns bright blue. In our photo's it's not quite as blue as it gets.

Left side view.

Right side view.

So the lake is really a crater. (Click photo for much bigger picture)

Water is now coming in through layers of rock, also fed through a sink hole. (Click photo for much bigger picture)

Read more about this magnificent lake on Wikipedia.

We also saw a few large wind mill parks creating beautiful environment friendly energy.

When entering the state of South Australia, you are kindly asked to leave all your fruit and other potentially dangerous organic matter behind in the designated bin. They do this to prevent from certain fruit flies etc.

After getting rid of one whopper of an orange, we drove on.

Passing Canola fields...

And vineyards.

We stopped almost every 200 kilometres to fill up the tank. Not that it was empty, but just to make sure we wouldn't run out of petrol. Never know how long you'll be without petrol pump in this country. I also cleaned the windshield at these occasions. There were a LOT of insects...

And then we drove on again until we arrived at our little castle again. It's good to be home.

Thursday, October 9, 2008

The Great Ocean Road, part 1.

Early morning, when we woke up to leave the hotel, we spotted these hot air balloons outside. They were very lucky with the weather.

After we left Melbourne and Geelong behind us we could finally start our Great Ocean Road drive. The first stop would be Bells beach. This beach is famous for surfing. It was also featured in some movie(s). There is a look out point. This is the view to the right.

A closer look reveals a bunch of surfers.

Looking to the left shows even more surfers. Black seems to be the fashion these days.

There is always one...

The waves were not too big I think. A lot of the surfers seemed to be waiting for that one perfect wave. It was cool to see them ride the waves though.

We drove on and encountered very different views but all equally beautiful.

We had lunch in a town called Lorne. Really nice place with a good atmosphere.

You say Great Ocean road, you say 12 Apostles. While you're there, why not check out what everybody talks about. It's a bunch of rocks. Big rocks. They kinda stand out. Some have collapsed so there are only about 7 left I believe.

Here's another two. They even do commercial flights in helicopters so you can see them from the air. It was nice to see but I can't say I was awed or anything. When we drove on, we actually saw another 50 rocks like these but a bit smaller further up the coast.

Another stunning view. Every now and again you pass a place where a little river comes in to the ocean. Intriguing, exciting and beautiful. Sweet water comes in to the salt water. You never really see a river flowing over the beach. Well, I haven't seen it before.

There were also places where you drive through bits of rain forest. Stunning. No manicuring here. 100% wild growth.

And then we saw this swampy area. Lots of cows. it looked like The NL! A Dutchie must've settled here when it was still a lake and thought "Hey, I can pump this water out!". Again, intriguing.

Often it looked a lot like Ireland. And I mean a LOT.

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Tom Poes

This is a typical row of houses in the city (centre) of Melbourne. They look nice but they're also very small I think.

Street corner close to our hotel.

Flinders station. The masses running in to catch their trains.

We found a nice little street to sit down. I actually found a vanilla slice (Tom Poes) that was 99% like the Dutch version. It was fantastic.

View through the street where we were sitting.

View in to another little street as we walked on.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

St. Kilda

The girls while waiting for the tram that would take us to St. Kilda. Melbourne's famous beach.

And what a tram it was! People from Amsterdam will recognise it. It's a Siemens "Combino". Most seats are comfortable but because the wheels are stuck to the chassis (as opposed to using a bogie(draaistel)) it can get a little rough when going around the corner.

The front carriage from the inside. Exactly the same but mirrorred.

Acland street in St. Kilda. Known for it's....

Cake shops!

It's a famous beach but the beach is actually really small.

People were kite surfing.

After St. Kilda we went to another part of Melbourne. In Brunswick street we found a place to have lunch. It was a bit of a guess but the salmon was really nice. It came with spinach and green beans.

That's it from the outside.

Old building in a side street.

After a rest in our hotel we went for a walk around the hood. We didn't know we were this close to China town.

As a bonus we found a Wagamama. Can't just walk past. Just can't. Have to go in. It was a very cute one though. Very small with only one long table and a few smaller ones. The chicken katsu curry was fantastic though.