Spending Time in Melbourne

On Monday morning we headed off to Melbourne. We had been here before but only for a day or two, and that is not enough time to get out to see the surrounding area.

We spent a couple of days doing our walks around the city centre, the parks and Botanic Garden and then booked a coach tour on the Great Ocean Road for Wednesday. This is a must-see area of the coast, but it is an all-day affair, leaving the meeting point at 8:45 in the morning and being dropped off just before 8:00 in the evening.

And look - scaffolding!!! On the iconic Flinders Street Station
no less! We knew we'd find some somewhere!

One of the fancy arcades in the city centre

The boating clubs along the Yarra

The Conservatory in Fitzroy Gardens. They are having
a hydrangea show at the moment.

The Lake in the Botanic Gardens. You can rent a boat
with a punter to take you around. The gardens are huge.

We had dinner at Rockpool Grill and this was Monica's
Pavlova dessert! Mostly meringue and whipped
cream with some passionfruit. No, she didn't finish!
Larry over there had custard-filled doughnuts and
ice cream.

Our hotel is across the street from St. Patrick's
Cathedral, the largest church in Melbourne.

 The Great Ocean Road (the 'Great' was added in the 1990's for some reason nobody knows) was originally built from 1919 to 1931 by soldiers who had returned from service in the First World War. The road was meant to connect all the oceanside towns that were previously only reachable by ship. The problem was that the coastline is quite treacherous through this whole area, and the safety of ships, passengers and cargo was always in question. The soldiers dedicated the finished road to their fallen comrades, so the Great Ocean Road is actually the largest war memorial in the world.

The day began quite cloudy and a bit cool, but by the time we stopped for lunch in the town of Apollo Bay the sun had come out and it started to get hot and a little humid. The first photos are of the Surf Coast, so known because of the constant good surfing waves.

It is school summer holidays down here, and lots of kids
are taking water safety lessons at the beach.

After lunch the terrain changed a bit more and we were on the Shipwreck Coast all the way to Port Campbell where we left the Ocean Road to come back.

After lunch: the Twelve Apostles

The Loch Ard Gorge and Razorback. The gorge is named after the Loch Ard, a ship that went down in the nearby waters with loss of all but two lives. Razorback is so named because it is very narrow and topped with sharp rocks.

Razorback 

A better view. Now you can see where it got the name.

The Loch Ard Gorge. You can walk down to the beach,
but it was getting hot and the flies were ridiculous.

 On Friday we booked a tour out into the Yarra Valley. This is Victoria's wine country, about an hour outside of Melbourne. Stops at a couple of wineries included snack and lunch along with some beautiful vistas of the rolling hills and pastoral views.

At Dominique Portet winery. This is now a 10th generation
winery, including time in France. Most of the vines
in the Yarra Valley were only planted in the 1960s.

Snack at Portet.

Lunch at Oakridge Winery. The chef has his own vegetable and
herb garden out back and sources everything else like meats and cheeses
from local producers. It was delicious!

So far today we've not done much of anything: a short walk in Fitzroy Gardens only a block away, some time in the pool and on the terrace (under cover of an umbrella, of course), and as we write we are sitting in the hotel courtyard snacking on crudites. We may do a Hop-on, Hop-off bus tour tomorrow; we haven't quite made up our minds. With temperatures in the mid/high-30s Celsius we tend to consider carefully what we want to do so as not to melt while doing it!! We also have to rest up ahead of Monday and Tuesday in Uluru. They will be quite busy, and forecasts right now are pointing towards 40C temperatures. Good thing we plan to be out at the rock in the evenings and early morning.