2015/11 Australia trip - Mulgrave cleanup |
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Back on the road we stopped in Warrnambool to pick up some cash, actually a lot of cash, to pay off our loans. We‘d never been in the bank branch before but all I needed to withdraw thousands of dollars was my debit card, no ID requested. Scary.
We were going to drive the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne, slower but very scenic. We stopped at the first few scenic overlooks
like the Bay of Islands and the Grotto, and walked a few trails but we soon realized that the trip would take two days at the rate we were going. There are at a least a dozen views just as good as the two pictured here.
We’d seen most of the area a couple of times, so we settled for watching sights from the road rather than visit the Apostles and Loch Ard and all the others. This was just as well as parts of the road like the climb up and over Cape Otway are slow going, with steep switchbacks. There were literally dozens of tour buses coming in the other direction; some of those overlooks were going to be wall to wall with people.
From Apollo Bay the road hugs the shoreline and we followed it to Torquay. Sandie had done a great job of running our supplies down to one teabag and a cup of milk so we were going out to dinner. We needed to let John and Edna know our arrival time; we hunted for a payphone and eventually found one in a pokies bar. It didn’t work, but the staff let us use their office phone.
We had good meals at Torquay Thai and then an easy drive after rush hour through Geelong and across Melbourne to Mulgrave, arriving before dark. We’d driven over 12000K, more than 7500 miles.
John and Edna had recently returned from Sydney, where they’d been visiting Carolyn and Jason. John and been helping them build a large deck out over their sloping back yard. Edna had been enjoying the grandchildren.
John had fixed the stove, but now the swimming pool’s chlorinator was on the blink. The weather wasn’t really warm enough to for a swim anyway.
Saturday November 21st
We had a cool and cloudy morning, slowly warming up.
We started the process of cleaning up the Troopie. It was dirty but nowhere near as bad as when we’d returned from our 2010 trip to Cape York. That trip had involved thousands of miles on dirt roads. I was emptying the camper while Sandie worked on washing our yukky clothes. In the last few days we’d been getting rid of surplus equipment like our spare water canisters and my ancient glued hiking boots, but we still had plenty to sort out. John’s powerwasher helped, but mostly the Troopie had to be scrubbed.