16th Jan to 28th jan 2010

Sunday 17th January 10

Weather has returned to winter conditions. The rest of the day was spent watching the test match.

Monday 18th January 10

Day of rest due to the wintery weather but in the evening we drove in to Rosebud (I don’t know who dreamt up that name for a town) to go to the cinema to watch ‘Bran nue dae’ which was quite amusing but surprisingly didn’t show aboriginals in a good light but rather truthfully, despite the amount of aboriginal cast and story line

Tuesday19th January 10

Nothing to report other than very cool weather

Wednesday 20th January 10

We shopped in Hastings and then played 9 holes of golf on the HMAS Cerberus golf course which provided a good walk for us and Foxy. In fact both Foxy and Merry were pretty well done for by the time we finished. Our fitness levels have declined somewhat, and having not played golf sine last January last year in Adelaide it was as well we elected to only do the 9 holes. HMAS Cerberus is Australia’s largest naval training facility which also houses the golf course. It only has 9 greens but has 18 distinct Tees so a second 9 holes is different to the first 9 holes. Allowing Foxy to walk round with us is most unusual and is the only course that we are aware of that allow, it but we haven’t actually tried at the outlying country courses before. City and larger town clubs would never entertain the idea. At one point of the course we passed a naval cemetery which has us rather puzzled as to why, surely the training isn’t that rigorous. The down side to the game of golf was that my personal chef was too shattered to cook dinner, and therefore had to suffer fish and chips from the local shop, which left a bit to be desired.

Thursday 21st January 10

Recovery after the golf

Friday 22nd January 10

Merry worked on the SAVE accounts whilst Barry watched the one day cricket match. The park is filling rapidly with make believe fishermen for the long weekend, consequently the noise level has risen exponentially. If it was just fishermen it wouldn’t be so bad but they bring their kids as well, and then forget to use them as bait.

Saturday 23rd January 10

The park is now about to overflow, and despite the size of the bay you can hardly see the water for boats. You could almost use the boats as stepping stones and walk out to fish from anywhere you fancy.

Sunday 24th January 10

The traffic on the water is now worse than on the roads for the journey down here. You don’t need to catch the Ferry as you can walk across the boats to French and/or Philip Islands.
Kev and Christine (fellow travelers) took us into another local village of Bittern to their Sunday market for some genuine fresh vegies

Monday 25th January 10

We drove down to Nepean National Park whilst Foxy was looked after by Kev and Christine, and took the Tourist Transporter Trip around the Park. These are two tractors towing five carriages each that leave the visitor centre every half hour and you can get on or off at any of the 4 major points of interest at will.

We went to stop 4 first

Fort Nepean which was a gun emplacement for protecting the entrance to the bay and therefore, Melbourne.

The entrance is also protected by the natural rip created by the calm water of the bay and Yarra River trying to leave the bay meeting the rough water of Bass Strait trying to enter the bay.

The emplacement allows you to explore the tunnels beneath them leading to the 6 inch shell storage areas, and gun posts, etc.

The guns apparently could fire the shells 9 kilometres.

We then went back to the visitor centre carpark and had our picnic lunch and caught the transporter to Stop 1 The old quarantine station were all migrants entering Melbourne had to spent time until cleared of decease.

We bypassed stop 2 which we visited a while ago and proceeded to Cheviot Hill that overlooks the beach where Prime Minister Harold Holte was drowned .

We climbed Cheviot Hill, walked to the Eagles nest which is a machine gun emplacement and observation post and then to the memorial stone just up the road

We finished the walk back from Holte’s memorial stone with a close view of one of the local metre long tiger snakes.

The effect of the zoom lens makes it look closer than it was but we were about 3 metres away which is quite close enough for one of the worlds most deadly

On the return journey to Stony Point we did a short detour in Portsea to have a look at yet another 'London bridge.'

Tuesday 26th January 10

We celebrated Australia Day with some of our fellow travelers and park management in the campers Kitchen with a BBQ lunch and sharing experiences, jokes, etc and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Later we watched the one day cricket match.
We had a disturbed night due to 3 ignorant female tent camper (baby whales with blubber obviously extending right up to the roots of their hair) who slammed car doors and where prepared noisily chatter all night until Barry used his usual 2.00am charm and tact to shut them up. Apparently they got the message load and clear. They also got a serve from management the next day.

Wednesday 27th January 10

We had to take the car to Mornington for its 80000km service which happens to be a big one costing $1050. This meant an early start to get there for 8 .00am, but as Barry normal wakes at daybreak which is currently at 5.40am (all you need after a disturbed night) he discovered a need to slam some of our car doors and run the diesel engine to warm it up in readiness for a 7.30am departure. He also had to repeat this operation as a precaution at 7.15am to ensure a smooth trip. We watched some of the Aussie open tennis and then took Foxy for a walk via a bush track almost to Crib Point, our nearest village about 2 km away.

Thursday 28th January 10

Collected the car from Mornington, shopped and attended to this blog plus a jigsaw puzzle.