Blog #8

Greetings Bloggies, there has been a period of a couple of weeks of ‘radio silence’ brought about by fatigue and a Herculean struggle on my part to insert photos into the blog text. I’ve done it before many times but I’m convinced of a conspiracy between Apple, Microsoft and Outlook to thwart my every effort to do it again. I won’t bore you with details. No, actually, I will bore you with details, why should I suffer alone?
The three co-conspirators contrive to constantly alter the sequence of photos or to remove them from the text and add them as a post script or to magnify the photos to such an extent that I can almost count the pixels, or to replace the photos with a code. Yesterday Joyce noticed I had lost the will to live following a session on the Outlook Help  line becoming ever more bamboozled by the possible causes and suggested that I sent the text and the photos completely separately. Now why didn’t I think of that? So, here t’is.
Also, one of our Rotary ‘minders’, Gary, has kindly set up a proper, professional blog using my contributions on hitpolio4six.blogspot.com which you might find more polished and easy to access.
Cheers Phil

Blog 8

On Tuesday April 23rd we followed the directions through the centre of Geelong, making slow hassle free progress until we got on the highway heading out to Queenscliff. This had a wide shoulder and was very flat, so we made excellent progress and began to believe as we pressed on that we could make the 11 o’clock ferry, which we did with only five minutes to spare. The ferries across from Queenscliff to Sorrento run hourly on the hour and take about 40 minutes allowing us time, whilst on the ferry, to phone ahead to our friends, Wayne and Rue, and arrange a meeting off the ferry, in Sorrento. They made the excellent suggestion that we should meet at the Vanilla Slice shop in the town. The only drawback to this plan, from our perspective, was its location on top of a steep hill, but a delicious, supposedly ‘world famous,’ vanilla slice and a cup of coffee dispelled any misgivings. We spent a relaxing hour in warm sunshine (thanks for the loan of the hat, Rue) catching up with these two Tasmanian escapees before heading off up the peninsula towards our next port of call, Mount Eliza.

Photo vanilla slice hill climb

Photo vanilla slice heaven with Wayne

Progress up the main road, the Nepean Highway, was fast but not altogether enjoyable as we cycled on the road shoulder, pretty much shoulder to shoulder with fast, heavy traffic until we got close to Mount Eliza, when we knew that we would have to turn off to find our next hosts, Caroline and Chris.

Google Maps directed us to turn right (across four lanes of snarling traffic) and into a warren of quiet suburban streets where we followed left, right, left, right, up and down a hill before emerging back on the Nepean Highway, a couple of hundred metres from our departure point and facing another right back turn across the snarling traffic. Did we lose our composure? Did we mutter a string of expletives? Too bloody right, we did. Just confirms my long held belief that if you want to get seriously lost, you have only to rely on a GPS.

Finally, some eight kms later, another directive to turn right off the Nepean and, predictably, our hosts lived at the top of a very steep hill, making us tired and, ever so slightly, grumpy when we arrived. A very warm welcome from Chris soon put us in better spirits. We discovered that our hostess, Caroline, had arranged the Rotary meeting in her old girls school, Toorak College, which had just celebrated its 150th anniversary. Her Rotary club, Mt Eliza, meets weekly in the beautiful old dining room of the college and is a very vibrant club with about fifty members.

The meeting went well, the donation to End Polio Now was very generous and we returned to enjoy a pleasant evening of conversation with Chris and Caroline in their beautiful home on the hill. 

After leaving Mount Eliza the next morning in sunny conditions, the weather rapidly deteriorated to grey and threatening with intermittent light showers, which persisted until we got into Melbourne.

Mornington Peninsula bathing hut

During one particularly heavy shower, we sat in a shelter on the foreshore south of Saint Kilda and were soon joined by about 15 teenage children on an outdoor ed bike trip from Geelong back to their school in Kyneton. It was taking a few days and they were camping en route. What a impressed us about the group was how cheerful they were in these wet, cold and blustery conditions. Presumably, wet, cold and blustery beats attending school, although if all their teachers were as friendly and chatty as their outdoor ed teacher they would have had no cause for complaint.

The route into Melbourne hugged the sea shore for 25km, following Beach Road and a bike track. Beach Road is well-known in Melbourne as a Mecca for cyclists on the weekend and it’s also part of the route taken by a major annual cycling event run by Bicycle Victoria, the Round the Bay in a Day. About 16000 cyclists participate in a 220 km ride around Port Philip Bay, clockwise or anti clockwise, with numbers mainly limited by the ferry capacity between Queenscliff and Sorrento. Joyce and I have done it three times with highlights being sharing the ferry with a whole group of Elvis Presley impersonators, and being sucked along by a huge peloton of gun riders to complete 100 km in exactly 3 hours. That’s the fastest we’ve ever maintained on the tandem and not something we could hope to repeat with a further 25 years aging in our legs.

Reaching Central Pier, we picked up another bike route into central city and then out along Swanston St. Apart from negotiating crowds around the casino in Southbank it was all very easy. Our destination was the house of friends in North Carlton, where we planned to stay over the long ANZAC weekend. Our friends had taken fright at the threat of this home invasion and wisely decamped to Alice Springs for a fortnight of dog sitting, leaving us the keys and unsupervised access to their larder and the fridge. Unwise IMHO but, thank you, Ian & Amanda. I don’t know why, but ‘dog sitting in Alice’ had the ring of ‘a dog ate my homework’. I’m sure it was perfectly legit.

We had thought that we would have one final Rotary commitment that evening at Albert Park but all attempts to contact the club failed and we instead enjoyed a quiet night to ourselves. 

Not much to report on our time in Melbourne because we had a lot of housekeeping chores such as washing, replying to emails and SMSs and bringing the Blog up-to-date. The mountain of washing meant that we had to stay indoors until it dried because the Melbourne weather was cold and we had so few clothes left to wear. To minimise weight the clothes in our luggage were, well, minimal and I only packed one pair of jeans, which meant I had to wear shorts all day. Mental note to pack two pairs next time. Whoa, forgot, we said ‘never again’!

We took full advantage of the location of our borrowed house in North Carlton, only a block away from Lygon Street, and visited some lovely coffee shops, cake shops and restaurants over the three days sojourn. Oh, and a local wine bar, where a familiar face from our childhood peered at us from behind the counter. Georgie Best, one of the most outstanding soccer players I have ever seen, and one of the most seriously flawed. His skills all resided in that part of his central nervous system south of his common sense cortex, and he is chiefly remembered for his alcohol addiction, which led to not one, but two, liver transplants, and for his candid answer to an interviewer, who asked where all his money had gone, ‘most went on booze and women and the rest I just frittered away’. So, why was his photo behind the bar? Is he the patron saint of alcoholics, perhaps? 

By Saturday vitality had returned and we had a foray into the centre of Melbourne on the tram to visit some old haunts and top of the list (being mid morning) was Laurent for coffee and cake. BUT! What a crushing blow! They no longer seem to sell mille feuilles. We’ve scoured the length and breadth of France in search of the perfect mille feuille and thought that Laurent’s were the finest in Oz. And now they’re gone. We’re inconsolable.

Cake display in Laurent - no mille feuilles! Inconsolable.

Central light fitting in Laurent - looks like the sparrows enjoy their cakes, too.

In a black mood we wandered Melbourne’s streets until we reached Victoria markets, more precisely a cheese stall, where, suddenly, the clouds parted, the sun shone again, the birds sang and there was Cheshire cheese. Joyce unreasonably prevented me buying more than a mere slab, citing weight restraints.

Just a random street sign in Melbourne- Joyce ‘spotted’this.

 So back at North Carlton again. We had a long discussion about when we should ride to our next appointment in Kyneton and discovered that a full day of showers was forecast for Monday, but Sunday would be fine. We’re fair weather cyclists and decided to leave Melbourne a day earlier than planned to avoid misery.  

Cheers Phil