Melbourne to Sydney & back to Berwick

Happy New Year everyone! Let us just bloody well hope that it is a good one. This is a picture of the fireworks in Sydney Harbour, don’t they look amazing. I quite believe that I walked over this same bridge just a few days ago. I heard on the radio that the fireworks in London were pretty spectacular also. We had a pleasant and rather civilised, quiet dinner for two on New Year’s Eve, enjoying a steak dinner and wine before walking back to our motel just after 9pm. It was tiring being in the car all day with temperatures exceeding 35 outside and both the heat and the long journey wore me out so I went to bed and Phil stayed up to watch the film which meant he saw the New Year in by himself. I don’t think he minded much but he was a little groggy when he awoke the next morning.

The plan was that we would drive along the ocean road on the Bass Strait and find ourselves a quiet stretch of beach and lay down our towels. But would you believe it, when we opened the motel door, we found grey skies and rain in the air. I think it had rained overnight but it was obvious from the skies that there was more rain to come. We stopped off at the next village for some breakfast and drove some 30 or 40k along the coast hoping that the sun would come out and we could have a beach day. But no such luck, the rain came and we decided to abandon our beach plan and head back to Berwick.

We got back sometime just before 2pm unintentionally disturbing Jeremy who’d had a very heavy night in the city celebrating the New Year. I had meant to warm him that we were heading home but I couldn’t get the text to send. No change back at no 44 and I can’t believe we’ve been away for 10 days. We had some quite urgent internet stuff to sort so Phil got stuck into this whilst I stuck on the washing and had a clean up. Most of Berwick seemed to be shut, which wasn’t altogether surprising because it was New Years Day but the supermarket was open so we drove into town and picked up some lamb steaks, pots and veggies and a few other basic supplies. Phil cooked us a lovely meal, we got showered and changed and settled in front the plasma. The Foxtel seems to be working now so we had more choice than before we went away but there still wasn’t much on to watch. We did spot that The Sopranos was on from 7.30pm which we were really happy about because we love this series and the episodes they were showing were ones we hadn’t seen. And that was our New Years Day.

It all seems a little flat after the excitement of Sydney. It was a long drive to Sydney & back and I am happy to say that we made it back without any major trauma. I was nervous at first about doing such a long journey and wanted to fly, but in retrospect, I am glad we did the drive because it meant we saw so much more. You could do Melbourne to Sydney in a day at a push but we did the first stretch to Sydney over 3 days and 2 overnight stops along the coastal road and coming back we went via Canberra with 3 overnight stops. Yes, there miles of endless stretches of vast empty nothingness but we also saw some awesome sights. The last stretch of the journey was very pretty, some great beaches all the way from Ninety Mile beach through to Venus Bay, in fact, pretty much all the way to Philip Island. What a big shame that it was raining. Never mind, I know I shouldn’t moan but we really are not having much luck so far with the weather in Australia. Saturday was another bleak day with grey dull skies with not a single ray of sunshine. Why is it that everything seems so much better when the sun shines?

Harriet managed to get through to us on the SKYPE briefly just before we left the motel to say that she’d had to go the visit A&E at MK hospital at 5.30am in the morning. I’m not sure that I got the whole story because we hadn’t long been away and the SKYPE connection was a little fuzzy. Apparently she was given antibiotics for tonsillitis and also more antibiotics for a stomach infection. The doctor wasn’t too sure what was wrong with her stomach but I believe she had to give a few samples. Poor Harriet, nearly every time she has a holiday from work she seems to come down with one bug or another. So Harriet if you’re happening to be reading this entry today, I hope you’re feeling better soon and keep taking the pills!

We’re going to be taking it fairly easy over the weekend so apologies now for any boring entries. I’m sure things will liven up again when we fly to Brisbane on Monday, in fact the way things pan out with me and Phil I have no doubt whatsoever we’ll find something to write about. Today we’re going shopping and will have lunch out and then maybe a movie if we can find a cinema and a film that we both want to watch. For now though, I leave you with some of some of the lovely beaches that we saw from a distance but didn’t get to sit on.