Happy New Year!

We had an early start as we had neither internet nor breaky, as it’s known locally, before we headed out towards Melbourne from the fabulous Mallacoota. We set off at 8.45am and arrived at our Motel in Leongatha at 5.15pm so it was a real travelling day on the hottest day since we got here at 35 degrees. As itwas New Years Eve everything is fully booked and we were travelling from pillar to post before finally finding a vacancy. We travelled down the Princess Highway to Cabbage tree Creek when I asked Claire if she thought that Cabbage Tree Creek sounded like a place that would have internet so we could put yesterday’s blog on; we both agreed that it probably wouldn’t so turned left towards Marlo which is by the sea. I’m so pleased we made this decision because, guess what? Skippy bounced across the road in front of us and he was a real live Kangaroo, not one from a zoo or with a fence around it, a proper genuine Australian Kangaroo. Thank you Skippy, Happy New Year; I now know this years going to be a good one. Also the views were fabulous with the same theme as yesterday of sea, a stretch of beach and a salt lake on the inside of the beach.

We carried onto Orbost where we had breakfast and could join the Princess highway again past the Lakes Entrance, through Bairnsdale and Sale where we turned onto the Gippsland Highway towards Port Albert for our first disappointment of no vacancies. Back onto the highway to Claire’s favourite place that she had been reading about called Yanakie. Yanakie is the gateway to Wilsons Promontory National Park that you have to pay to get into and I believe that there are no shops, pubs or hotels, which may be great sometimes but not for us without food, tent, boots or anything. Especially not on New Years Eve after we had been driving all day so we about turned and headed back to the highway again.

Once we were back to Fish Creek we were off to Venus Bay which seemed to have a ring to it; I really thought this is where we would be laying our hats for New Year. Unfortunately, “No Vacancies” or “Gone Fishing”, so we headed inland to Meeniyan that, again Claire liked the look of as we drove through earlier. At Venus Bay we saw the motorbike policeman; well, Claire thought he was a policeman. We had seen him earlier when he pulled to the side of the road, to let me passed behind a tractor with a haystack on top, by double white lines; no overtaking. I didn’t overtake even though it was safe to because I would have had to go over the lines; instead drove up the hill at 20kmh until he turned off and I could get back up to normal speed (the speed limit). In the mean time the motorbike cop that wasn’t in uniform, but Claire thought he was one, caught me up. I wasn’t sure what the speed limit was so drove exactly at 80kph and after a while he overtook me and disappeared into the distance. Anyway, this time, at Venus, he was in front of me so I could have a proper look for myself and although it wasn’t a police bike nor did he have police clothes he had the ‘air’ of a policeman about him and the bike did too. Within 50 yards his lights flashed and he pulled in the guy in front for speeding. Claire is ’The Man’. Anyway, our theory was that inland places wouldn’t be as popular as seaside places so might be more likely to have vacancies. Claire had spotted a nice Motel on our way out, which would now be on our way in, so we stopped to have a look, No Vacancies; such a shame as they even had a pool. The lady there was lovely and rang a motel in the next town towards Melbourne to find that they did have vacancies so we headed towards Leongatha. We said we would stop and booked in the name of Krause, but when we got there it looked like it was in the middle of nowhere so we carried on into town to have a look. It was far too far out to walk, especially on New Years Eve so we parked and tried the main Hotel in town. They had two rooms which they showed us but neither had air con or even a fan but they recommended the other Motel just down the road. So here we are at Leongatha Motel to see the New Year in as Mr and Mrs Mason, in case the motels speak to each other; we had a quick but thorough shower and walked back to the hotel for dinner which was great. They had a special dinner of T bone steak for $15 and what a plate full, we could hardly eat the meat let alone the bone, gristle and fat. A real bargain, and again, proper cooking. The place is called Mc Martins Hotel and looks great from the outside except they don’t have decent signs. The bar and restaurant is nice but not very well defined as distinct areas. When he showed us the rooms everything was fine but the room only had a bed and en-suite but no fridge or anything else, not even a fan. They only charge $58 for a double room and $68 for a double room with en-suite so it’s really cheap, almost backpackers prices but in a nice massive hotel, but I get the feeling that they are missing what the average Australian requirements are these days. They also have no internet in the whole place, but you could have guessed that from what I have written so far; a little bit old school and out of the times. Better to charge more and get it right; I wish it was up for sale, it’s so close!