Canberra & melbourne monday 6th january ali ...
Trip Start
Apr 29, 2002
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42
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Trip End
Apr 28, 2003
Canberra/Melbourne, Australia
Tuesday, February 4, 2003
Monday 6th January, Ali and I headed off to Canberra (Capital City of Australia!!) in Paul's car (thanks very much). We spent 3 days & nights seeing all the sights, both finding the War Memorial Museum quite moving. We also had a tour of the Australian Parliament Building amongst other things. Canberra is a strange Capital City, purpose built in the middle of nowhere and although there is plenty to see and do during the day there is not a lot happening at night, so three days was ample!
We returned to Paul's in Berowa late on Wednesday 8th Jan in time to wash and repack our clothes as we flew to Melbourne on Friday 10th January.
Pam, an old neighbour from Abbott Road, collected us from Melbourne airport as we would be staying with her for the next few days. We dumped our bags at her house and went for a 'tour' of her small holding. She has a herd of goats, four cows and has just planted some olive trees. On the way back to her house in Mitcham, we had fish and chips with a glass of wine by a lake while we watched the sun go down!
The next day was her father Bob's 90th birthday, he was having a party at the local RSL club and we had been invited! We went for an hour but stayed for two, after which we caught a train into the centre of Melbourne to meet friends of Ali's family for dinner. They took us to St. Kilda's where we had a walk on the beach, a drink on the pier and dinner with them overlooking yachts in the harbour. It was a lovely night but we have since found out that Ali spent the whole night calling Alison's Dad 'Dave" when in fact his name is Bill!!!!!!
Pam wanted to take us out for the day on Sunday and once we had found her handbag and car keys (in the grass in the front garden)!!, we set off to visit some wineries and a cheese factory in The Yarra Valley. Our first stop was The Chandon Sparkling Wine centre, yes it is part of Moet & Chandon and we had a very interesting guided tour, learning all about how they make Champagne/sparkling wines. The only disappointment was that we didn't get any free samples!!! We then went on to The Oakridge winery where we made sure we tasted as much as possible!! At the cheese factory we bought some Buffalo Kabana, as it was far too hot to buy any cheese and put it in the car (about 38C). We then bought some lovely cheesy bread to go with our Kabana and stopped for a picnic lunch by Beaver Creek, afterwards cooling our feet off in the icy cold water before heading off up and over the Dundong mountain. Coming back down the mountain, we still in scroching heat, we stopped to fill our water bottle from a mountain spring, before heading down to Warburton which was the small picturesque country village that Pam grew up in.
Monday, we managed to get tickets for The Australian Tennis Open. The weather was beautiful & very hot. We were seated in the shaded area of the arena, but being typical Poms, we noticed that most of the unshaded seats in the arena were empty and in full sun, so for ever in search of that glorious tan we plastered ourselves in sun tan lotion and took up our positions in the empty seats. Well, we lasted about twenty minutes before the heat became unbearable and we had to retreat to our reserved seats in the shade!!!! We saw four good first round matches, we good seeded players, none of them particularly one sided and the final game, which was getting exciting, cancelled due to injury. We eventually left at about 7pm, with very numb bottoms, we couldn't sit down any longer - thank God for padded train seats!!!!
Tuesday 14th we were off to pick up Maureen from the Airport to start our journey on the Great Ocean Road, we had hired a medium sized car for the 3 of us, but when Lou & I picked it up, it was more like a compac and there was no way we would get ours and Maureen's luggage in and be able to sit comfortable for 5-6 days, so with a bit of old chat, managed to get upgraded to a lovely big Commodore for not a lot more!!! Then we received a phone call from Maureen saying that she had missed her flight from Sydney, apparently out til 6.00am and then fell asleep when she got back to her room - good job she paid full price for her ticket and didn't go backpacker style - they put her on the next flight and we finally all met up about 1.30 - lots of stick duly given!!! After loading her 5 bags (yes, I said 5) into the back of the car off we set on our next adventure............
