Archive for January, 2009

Friday night in Melbourne was a bit of a washout – well for my purposes it was. I wanted somewhere where I could site outside and have a beer and a smoke whiling away the hours before my flight – my flight was at 6.25am Saturday morning so I figured I’d head to the airport and sit it out.

I found one place that suited my purposes – the Melbourne Hotel or the such but it closed after 15 minutes because it wasn’t busy enough. Not busy enough – at 9pm on a Friday night. Not many pubs back home have a similar problem of people not wanting to drink in them, but then again I am getting the idea that with 20 million people in a country 1.5 times the size of Europe there is a lot of competition for limited livestock.

So I headed to the airport and waited it out, dining on a breakfast at McDonalds as nothing else was open – I had survived on nothing but fruit and yoghurt on my trip around the great ocean road and was saving myself for a laksha at the airport, but McDonalds it was to be…

I slept in the car again last night as it was too dark to find hammock space in Port Fairy, so I reclined in a dark spot off of the highway with a six pack of cold beers and the radio to keep my company. I had a wonderful evening howling along with the songs.

The next day I drove through the heat hoping to find cooler air up in the Grampian Mountains, but it was hot there too – 43 degrees Melbourne and probably the same or hotter inland.

But I did find this to swim in…

Mckenzie falls, for me the reason the Grampians came in to being. There is a big sign saying ‘don’t swim’ as you descend to the falls but it would have been a crime not to on such a hot day. The basin is deep and if I had had anyone to show off to I’d have been leaping off of high things, but as it was I just swam about steaming off the heat of the day until the sun went down.

Then I went and sat here…

Which was a lovely place to ponder for a while.

Later on I managed to find a place to pop my hammock up in a wooded clearing, I paid the $14 camping fee as it was going to a good cause and slept for 12 hours straight.

I parked the car in a parking bay by the side of the road and looked out at the panapoly of stars in the sky, the lack of light pollution here means there is no shortage of stars. I could hear the sea in the distance but had no idea that I would wake to the sunrise that greeted me.

After breakfast of yoghurt and strawberries I headed off into the heat of one of the hottest spells I have experienced so far. The temperature in Melbourne was 43 degrees and it would have been around the same here as just getting out of the car was like walking into an oven.

I stopped off at a few tourist attractions like the 12 Apostles, of which there are fewer now as they are collapsing – these are giant rock stacks in the sea that are impressive and worth a view, the last time I saw geology like this was in Mauritania, another dry place. The string of tourists stopping off at each attraction made me feel a bit like I was on a production line but the views were worth it.

Now I don’t like to complain about the heat as I do have readers in the chilly English winter that would swap their mothers for a day of heat, but I felt the need to find some cooling down. The answer came in the form of a dive shop, I drove past, reversed, hopped in and within an hour I was diving off of a place called Warrnambool amongst the surging swells of the kelp strewn bay.

The dive was fun after I settled in to it and after twenty minutes I found myself reclining as the strong swell threw me backwards and forwards off of the reef. The other divers were searching for Crayfish but I felt happy enough to just bob about in the cool water, when we got out my temperature was cool enough to handle any heat.

After this I drove to a wonderful place called Port Fairy and jumped into the sea in a lagoon that allows for good swimming due to the lack of surf.

Right now I’m in another YHA piggy backing the internet connection, it’s what a Cyber Gypsy has to do to get online around here…

I think I have gotten the hang of why the Australians use the word awesome so much, it’s because so many things are called great that they need a word that is greater than great. The awesome ocean road perhaps, well it lives up to it’s name. Australia is awesome, the word doesn’t feel out of place here, it would feel out of place in the considered and ancient rambling hills of Sussex, not in the vastness down under.

The road was built as a living monument to the returning soldiers from the first world war and was constructed when blokes still used picks and shovels and went home for big cow pies. It is a great construction that would be great to ride on a motorbike as it clings in serpent fashion to the side of plunging hills, but for me I am cruising it in a hired Nissan and it’s still a lot of fun.

I drove through the heat of the day with the windows open and found myself a beach to run along, when I was hot enough I doused myself in the ocean surf and found a coffee shop to kick back in. At the moment I am in one of the comfy Ozzy YHA’s using the internet connection as I have told a friend I will help him out with some work, the only thing that is missing at the moment is him.

There are lovely little secluded beaches around here that you have to hike to and this is where I spent the sunset, in a tiny bay that you could only get to by descending through a gulley that would have been home to Aboriginal people over 10,000 years ago, they don’t spend much time here now so it seems which is a shame.

Tomorrow I will head towards the Grampian mountains, but at what speed depends on what I find on the way. Time goes slowly here and will do when we’re gone.