A trip to rural Victoria (part 2)

G'day,

Nice to discover no further complaining and I'm happy to welcome Andrew into the circle of disciples. A special welcome to Emily, Josara, Julia and Cord (well...us usual, maybe) and a pfft to #5.

The next morning after we have not been molested by spiders and/or bull ants, we put the ancient fuel powered cooker that we found in the cabin to use and had coffee. That's civilisation for you, even in the middle of the bush. When we were sufficiently awake Josara beat me in Scrabble several times (again, bloody hell). My efforts to invent words were unsuccessful, even though I could explain what they meant. And mind you some of the explanations were pretty creative but still unsuccessful...

Around midday we put the dogs in the car and set off to the beach. Ah by the way, this is the famous "Great ocean road"
And via the Great Ocean Road we arrived at Point Addis...
It turned out that Point Addis was a nature reserve and dogs were to be kept on the lead so after giving this matter a little thought we decided to do another U-turn and drive a little way back to Bells Beach. According to Josara Bells Beach is much better, it's a dog's off-lead area and she has been there before. The way to Bells beach was blocked by a road block saying "Public event in progress". I started wondering what kind of public event would take place on the Surf Coast beach on a Good Friday. After all Australia is a very secular county and I couldn't imagine that Australians would do something like this famous Mexican "let's all grab a huge cross and drag it through our village to show how devout we are" thingy. But you never know, maybe it was the annual Good Friday "let's get bloody drunk and nail something to a piece of wood" contest. Religion for Australians if you get my drift...

So we parked the car a way away and walked over to discover that it was a music festival....on Good Friday. Unthinkable in Germany, even though Germany is officially a secular country, public fun on Good Friday wouldn't be allowed, at least not officially. In this area Australia scores again...

So as we couldn't enter that beach neither we went to Anglesea to get something to eat and hopefully find an open shop (as Good Friday is one of the few public holidays on which everything is closed). And like back home, towns in touristic areas don't care for public holidays, so I went and bought candles to ensure that we had light tonight. And I'm a little ashamed to admit my next un-manly deed, one of the seven deadly sins against true manly manliness: I went into a shop and ASKED FOR DIRECTIONS to a hardware store. It was a successful and strangly satisfying experience but I wonder a lot when I will buy my first pink shirt...argh....

Well anyway...we got a connection adapter for the gas bottle and then I DID IT AGAIN, asked for directions to the nearest dog-off-lead beach and, yes I admit it: I'm a gender confused individual...then we went further down the Great Ocean Road
until we arrived at this parking ground. And this time it was perfect, no nature reserve and no public event, so we took the dogs and went for a walk at the beach.
Here is a video with impressions from the beach, mainly Buddy waiting for one of us to throw his ball...

And while we were sitting on the beach a bushfire broke out behind the hill approx. 5km down the road. Not a huge one, it didn't make it into the media and the cars going down Great Ocean Road continued to drive down even though they probably had to drive through the whole thing. But I guess until the whole bush burns the normal Australian says to him/herself "No worries" and carries on with whatever it is they are doing...


During our stay at the beach the bushfire or at least the smoke got bigger and bigger but still no reaction. Not a fire engine passing by or anything else. Well, we watched Buddy instead who invented a new routine when he was too impatient to wait for a human to throw the ball for him. This routine consisted of him playing with the ball by himself, digging it through his hind legs and the running after it again. I even have a video of this which is quite funny but I will only post it, if I get at least 5 comments from my readers saying please post it.

When we were about to leave I spotted this sign or rather Josara spotted it and I took the pic:
This sign is simply amazing. Not only due to it's message but also the location is really strange. You know, back home in Europe we have signs after you crossed a border into another country informing you of the traffic rules like maximum speed and stuff. I just want to point out that a sign like that would make sense on a border or as Australia has no borders that sign would make sense on the exit of airports or harbors. Somewhere where foreigners enter the country who could be reminded to stay on the left side of the road...

But putting a sign like that in the middle of bloody Great Ocean Road, more than 10km out of the next town, more than 100km away from the next international airport or harbor makes you speculate about the sanity of those people who decide on the location of signs. I mean you'll have to drive for at least 10km (on the left preferably) just to view this sign. And then it's a little on the late side as you either know already on which side to drive or you have become a victim in a horrible crash...

Well we drove back to the cabin and had a really nice dinner as the gas stove finally worked...
At least it was my manly duty to get the stove to work...so a little manliness is still there. After a great feast we played Scrabble...
...and despite my concentrated look on the pic I lost again...3 times in a row...damn and blast!

And the next morning we had coffee and doughnuts and then packed the stuff and the dogs
and drove back to Melbourne. That was my last trip to rural Australia for this time and my last full moon but next time there will be even better trips and full moon will come again...

Ok that was it for today, have fun, take care and cya tomorrow