Saturday 29th March

Happy Birthday, Amy!!

The weather has really changed now and it’s so cold. We had a fan heater on in the motel room last night, almost all night and tonight we again have had to put heat on, and Tom’s even turned the electric blanket on! It has been a bright sunny day, but the autumn has begun earlier than normal, so we’re told, although we notice Perth still has temperatures of 30 deg and over. By the time we get there, that’ll probably have changed too!!

We didn’t travel as far today, only to Morwell which is only just over 200kms from Orbost. We had a quick look round Orbost this morning – there’s a patchwork and quilting shop I saw last night on our walk. It’s lovely – one of those deceptively small shops from the outside, then like an Aladdin’s cave once you get in. The lady who owns it looks on it as just an extended workroom. She says that people pop in and out at odd times to do a class or just to do a little bit, but she’s there all the time and gets on with whatever she has on hand. Her quilts were fantastic and I could have spent a lot longer but Tom was patiently waiting outside – in the sunshine at least – so I didn’t linger.

We then drove on along the Princes Highway, through Lakes Entrance – a very pretty town but very commercialised. The waterways there stretch for miles but only a short way inland so you have long narrow inlets stretching up and down the coast. It all fills and empties with the tides, through a single inlet, and the water at that point can get quite violent. This stretch of coast is also quite hilly so it makes for interesting driving. We stopped just after the town, on a hillside looking back over it. There was a guide to the Gippsland (the name of this area) Lakes, and the first long channel is named the Hopetoun Channel. The quality of the air there is so clear as there is no pollution, that it almost hurt your eyes to look out to the horizon

Compared to yesterday’s greener fields, it was again very dry in this area but there’s lots more “civilisation”, by which I mean more houses, farms, traffic – not the long stretches where miles go by without seeing another car or house. The trees are taller and closer together in the woodland, which is also more prolific. The next town was Bairnsdale, where the Great Alpine Road meets the Princes Highway, so the traffic was a little heavier; then Stratford on the River Avon, where they hold a Shakespeare week in April!

At Sale, I said it was time for a loo stop but we couldn’t see any public toilets then spied a café – it was closed! Saturday, and closed? You’d think it would have been the busiest day. Anyway, on we went and found a truckers roadhouse – the Billabong – you know I said about the long drop dunny last Sunday? – well, this was almost as bad; of the two, I think I preferred the dunny!! But the coffee was good and it was served out of new polystyrene mugs – I think I’d have been a bit suspicious of anything that required washing! I don't think I've ever been in a more cluttered cafe.

After that, it was only a few kms to Morwell and we arrived at our motel, the Parkside, just before 3.00pm. The street beside it is called Hopetoun . (We’ve found that the Earl of Hopetoun was the first Governor General of Australia – was he a pupil at Wellington College?) As we arrived, so it started to rain and has done so on and off since. We did venture out for a walk, but there’s not a lot to see so it was just exercise. There’s a Chinese restaurant next door so that was dinner venue. The food was good and plenty of it, but not the best we’ve had. When it’s so cold, you need something hot to eat, and with no cooking allowed in the motel rooms, it’s rather frustrating.

Our motel room is very nice here and we have internet access. They’ve only just had broadband connected this week and we are the first to use it, so he’s let us have access free – nice man! There’s not a lot to say about today really as we haven’t done much. We did manage to speak to Amy this evening (morning in UK) and now Tom is going to sort out the pics and post this blog while I snuggle down in the warm bed and read my charity shop book. Night, all.