Mar 2008

Well, we have finally made it back to Perth and arrived at the caravan park we departed almost 8 months ago. Due to a lack of a reliable internet connection and the sheer volume of material I still have to put onto this blog site, I will update it when we are settled in a house with a better internet connection.

Thanks for hanging in there with us and keeping up with our exploits. If you haven't done it already, click on the susbscribe link and you'll be notified by email when I've done it.

It's good to be back in Perth, but we'll miss our travelling - it's been a wonderful 8 months.

Phil Denise and Danii

After spending the last 3 days in Albury/Wodonga, it’s time to head for Melbourne to board the ship to Tasmania. Only problem is that we have to leave the caravan park at 10am, but be at the dock by 7.30 pm. However, it will only take 3 ½ to 4 hours to drive there which leaves us 5 hours to kill on the way.

After just over 120 Kilometres down the Hume Hwy towards Melbourne, we turned off onto the Midlands Hwy and headed west. In contrast to what we’ve been seeing for the past couple of months, it is dry here and you can tell it hasn’t rained in a while. By lunchtime we stopped at Shepparton in the heart of the Goulburn Valley for a bite to eat and have a look around. This is quite a sizable town and we spent a bit of time there looking through the shops and walking around town before heading off again.

We continued onto the old goldfield area of Victoria and our first stop was Bendigo. We did not spend much time here, but drove around the streets of this wonderfully preserved city. You can tell there is a lot of history in this place, so Denise and I have pencilled this into the itinerary of our next trip. Next stop was Ballarat where we spent a little bit of time looking for somewhere to stop, however this city is not a friendly place to stop towing a caravan so it took us a while to find a place to stop. By this time it was starting to get a bit late, so it was onto the Western Freeway and head for Melbourne. Today we have managed to see quite a bit of northern Victoria on the way to Melbourne. After a couple of wrong turns we managed to find where the trans Tasman ship Spirit of Tasmania II is berthed. After being in a long queue for about half and hours, we finally drove the car and van onto the ship.

Just before 9pm the ship departed and it took just over an hour to go through Port Philip Bay and into Bass Strait. We should be in Devonport by 6 the next morning and hopefully the weather will be kind to us on the voyage over.

We have stopped at the twin border towns of Albury/Wodonga for 3 days as we have a breather and spend a bit of time before heading to Melbourne, and drive onto the ship to Tasmania. It’s amazing how big these towns are, and coming from Western Australia realise how much of WA’s population is concentrated in Perth. We spent time exploring both towns (as well as the odd bit of shopping). On another day went on a drive to visit as Strawberry Winery and bought a very yummy bottle of Strawberry Liqueur. After that, we drive onto Mt Beauty which is on the edge of the Victorian Alps. It was only 30 kilometres from the ski resort town of Falls Creek which (unfortunately) we did not go on to.

We are glad to be in drier areas now as there is no humidity with the warmth, which is a pleasant change for us all. No doubt as we move into cooler areas, we’ll miss the warmer weather (no pleasing some people eh?).