After sailing the seven seas, well maybe just on straight in one of Uncle Rene’s boats, we arrived in Melbourne in post day light saving darkness. Not to be perturbed these devil explorers from the home of the Tassie Devil set about finding our first campsite of the tour in downtown St Kilda. Okay, it wasn’t quite the normal campsite – more of a 5 star hotel 🙂
After checking in, locking our bikes in the garage and dumping gear in our room we set about foraging for food and water. Thankfully, the foraging did not take too long and we returned to our room to cook up Portuguese Chicken, baked potato, with sautéed mushroom, zucchini and carrot. All washed down with the Tamar River’s premium water…James Boags Premium Beer.
As usual I (Steve) had my holiday migraine. Heidi thinks it takes two days for the stress toxins to exit my system. After a good sleep and a coffee I was on the road to both repair and Geelong. (Impressive segue if you ask me!)
The trip to Geelong was quite uneventful especially given it was Easter Monday. However, when we hit the Great Ocean Road it was a totally different story.
We had all four seasons in one day and had to persevere with many frustrating tourist drivers. Yes we know we are tourists; however, we manage to drive more than 40km an hour, slow down for every corner, drift all over the road and don’t frustrate all of the other road users. There was one benefit of these inconsiderate drivers’ antics, we were able to spend more time watching the spectacular scenery.
Our first night under canvas, aka Heidi’s techie bushwalking tent, was in Apollo Bay. We won’t bore you with the details of our gourmet dinner. Let’s just say it was in keeping with the bushwalking theme of the tent! The caravan park was very pleasant, but the neighbours not so much. They decided to talk LOUDLY while we tried to sleep. In the end Heidi put on her best teacher voice and gave them what for while I allowed my night strength migraine tablet to work its sleepy magic. The weather turned overnight and we got rained on, however, the techie bushwalking tent did its job wonderfully and we woke warm and dry 🙂
There was a lot of rain forecast for today’s ride, up to 22mm. This was good and bad! Good in that we were able to test out more of our new riding gear we purchased for the trip – rain suits that make us look like the Michelin Men. And bad because 22mm of rain was predicted. Thankfully it didn’t rain as much as we were expecting and the rain suits kept the rain out.
Whilst it didn’t rain I think we would both have preferred the wet as opposed to the gale force winds that blew all along the coast. Our bikes were getting pushed all over the place (no need to panic mum K and mum G) our BMW R1200GS’s kept us firmly on the tarmac with the rubber side down.
Our journey continued on through Port Campbell, Port Fairy and to our destination for tonight, Portland. Portland is a quaint seaside town. If feels like a large version of Stanley, Swansea or St Helens and it has equally good seafood on offer.
We are getting into the routine of arriving and setting up our home for the night and then having a treat…a swig of Scotch followed by a well deserved coffee. This was a very late coffee by our standards; our second coffee for the day at 5.45pm. How did we make it you may ask? Well, Heidi nearly didn’t. I had to hide the knifes from her!!!
A quick trip over the road to get some supplies for dinner and I set about making us dinner. “Camp-made” potato and sweet potato wedges with grilled asparagus and fresh Blue Grenadier. All cooked on the BBQ at the caravan park – what did you peasants eat tonight? 😉
The rains have come and gone again tonight. Hopefully they will stay away. We are on a sun chasing mission. I guess on the upside the long range forecast for Adelaide is good 🙂
Time for us to turn in for the night and get out of this freezing wind – it’s currently 0, yes ZERO, degrees with the wind chill factor.
Until next time…
~S&H