Quick visit to Judy's friends on outskirts of Melbourne
Drove
through Melbourne over Westgate Bridge
Lunch at Little River
Winchelsea
Camped overnight at
Colac
Showground on Saturday
THANK YOU FOR BEING PATIENT WHILE THE PICTURES LOAD
Day 39
Saturday
26th December 2009
Click on the pictures for larger versions
The next stage of our trip wasn't something I was looking forward
to.
Towing a caravan is bad enough. Towing it in country areas can have
dramas.
Towing a caravan in a populated area where you don't know the
streets is demanding.
Towing it through the centre of Melbourne, where I'd never
been, I wasn't keen at all!!
To add to the concern, was having to go off the main highway,
then, to a suburb north east of the city centre, to visit an old
friend of Judy's, then back onto the highway heading west again.
Having the Tom Tom would help a lot of course.
Not long after leaving Sale we came across the view below.
Traffic stopped as far as I could see.
I turned the UHF CB on and scanned the channels. It wasn't
long before the chatter came up about an accident.
Not knowing the area, I had no real idea of how far ahead it was,
but hearing a very strong signal blasting over my speaker and
listening to his conversation told me it was about 5 km ahead.
We just had to sit and wait.
Eventually the traffic began to crawl.
I saw a side road with a bit of a park and toilet so decided to pull
out of the traffic and use the facilities and walk the dogs.
By the time we moved onto the highway again, the majority of the
backlog had cleared and I found it really easy to drive into the
outskirts of Melbourne.
The Tom Tom guided me off the highway and up to the north
east of the city to Judy's friend's home at Knoxfield.
Being in a residential suburb, the streets were very narrow. I found
the street, which was a Cul-de-sac!
To add insult to injury, the house we were heading for, had a car
parked out front and another parked in front of the house directly
opposite, leaving just enough room for a small car to pass through.
So there we sat. I couldn't back up because the road curved back to
a T intersection and I couldn't go forward.
As we sat there wondering what to do, Judy's friend came out and saw
the predicament.
Obviously it had happened before, because she immediately shifted
her car, which allowed us to pass.
I then had to do various manipulations backwards and forwards to get
the vehicle pointing in the right direction for when we were
leaving.
With the Daihatsu and the caravan sitting half on the footpath, we
greeted Judy's friend and went inside to enjoy a chat and cuppa.
We spent an hour or so there, with Judy catching up on things.
Judy's friend pointed out the best way back to the highway west and
we set off again up onto the Eastlink Toll Road and then onto
the Monash Freeway.
Judy took the pictures below as I concentrated on the reading the
overhead signs.
In the pic below I'm concentrating on keeping the vehicle and caravan in
the correct lane, as a crosswind on the Westgate Freeway kept
pushing them sideways.
Note the yellow wind sock!
Really it was a very easy drive across Melbourne, but the unknown
kept me very tense.
As the traffic thinned out, we saw a BP Service Station at a
place called Little River, near the Avalon Airport.
As we were hungry and hot, we decided to pull in and have a decent
cooked meal in the air conditioning.
We parked the vehicle, gave the dogs a drink and pee and headed over to
the restaurant area.
On the way over we saw a sign,
"Mangoes - $12 a box"
We were intrigued that they were so cheap
way down at Melbourne.
As we got closer, we saw why - "the boxes" only had 6 Mangoes in
them!
In Queensland, there were usually
at least 12 for that price, at
roadside stalls.
We enjoyed our meal and headed towards Colac
at around 4.00pm EST / 5.00pm EDST
I was very happy to see the wide open spaces as we headed out along the
Geelong Ring Road.
Finally, at around 4.45pm EST / 5.45pm EDST, back to the peace and
beauty of the countryside, as we headed for Winchelsea and then
Colac showgrounds, our campsite for the night.
We noticed a lot of bales as the afternoon passed. The one in the middle
picture below turned out to be a special one though.
If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you'll see some wag built a
Santa on some bales.
We arrived late in the afternoon in Colac. It was a Saturday and
Boxing Day. We needed some food, so looked around and found a
Safeway Supermarket.
We found the staff very friendly and enjoyed browsing in a very peaceful
atmosphere.
We headed to the showgrounds, booked in and set up our campsite on the
outer edge, under the trees, away from kids etc in case the dogs worried
people.
As it was just an overnight stay, we left everything connected, ready to
head for the Great Ocean Road in the morning.