Another travelling day but not so far to go from Morwell to Melbourne. It had rained during the night, but was sunny, dry and quite warm when we left the motel. The A1 becomes the M1 just before Morwell, but there’s not a lot of difference in the road conditions – it just shows as green on the map as opposed to red! It was quite busy and, like yesterday, there are lots more human habitations around. The air was also very clear – I think that was as a result of the rain we’d had last night – so we could see the hills clearly.
We decided as we had loads of time and couldn’t check into the Melbourne motel until 2.00pm, we’d detour up via the Dandenong mountains, just to the east of the city. They’ve built a new by-pass round Pakenham since the map book was printed, so instead of turning off there to start our detour, we ended up going on to Beaconsfield before finding the right road. In Emerald, we stopped for coffee and to get some information. Tom found a leaflet on the Puffing Billy train, which I had read about months ago in a travel supplement – it goes through Emerald! But it wasn’t due for some time, so we drove on to Menzies Creek, found a vantage point and were able to film and photograph it puffing through on its way to Emerald. What on earth would elf’n’safety have to say about this in UK?
We then did a quick drive down the road to the station
and saw TWO Puffing Billies there at the same time! We’ll probably go back on one of our days here and take a trip – it won’t be quite as long or arduous as the Trans Alpine in NZ was!! (or as expensive!)
We drove on through the forests to Belgrave and Sassafras (isn’t that a lovely name?) where we stopped and had a wander along with hundreds of others – it’s obviously the place to go on a Sunday afternoon. There are lots of nice little shops, although Tom was disappointed that the PC World was shut.
Still, there were tea rooms to visit and forest walks to go on, as well as lots of cyclists (VERY fit people as the hills are steep). It’s very pretty round there and for the first time since leaving NZ, we saw tree ferns in the forests.
There are some jolly big tall trees there too
and the foresters have been having a chopping session by the looks of it, as there were loads of areas with only tree stumps and lots of big logs. We found the World’s Best Gift Shop there – or so the notice proclaimed, and it did have an extraordinary array of gifts, not too expensive either.
But we didn’t buy anything – we keep thinking of the stuff we’ve already collected!
The next village on the road is Olinda – again a touristy place but pleasant, we may go back when we do the train trip. Mt Dandenong has the Skyline Lookout so we drove up through the forest and joined the hundreds of others enjoying the bracing air at the top! (It was blooming freezing!) The views are magnificent, real WOW factor, looking out over Melbourne, the central district of which looks like a series of spikes sticking up from a sea of housing.
The English Garden was a disappointment, as was the secret Garden, which didn’t contain much except for a seat, a statue and a gazebo – all designed as suitable backgrounds for wedding photos, but not much else. I sat in the Giant’s Chair
– luckily he didn’t come along and demand it back while I was there, and met Mr Percy Possum – but he was asleep by his front door, so I didn’t disturb him!
Then it was a very winding descent to Montrose where we joined Highway 32 into Melbourne. It was very busy but steady moving and we found our way to our new Motel, the Park Squire Motor Inn with no difficulty and signed in. It’s a bit further from the city centre than we thought, but the trams run right in front of it straight into the centre. We’ve just enjoyed a very nice fish and chip supper and are going to watch CSI in a few minutes so I’ll leave you for now. Byee!
PS I forgot to say yesterday that we were a bit flummoxed when we’d been in Victoria for some distance, and we came across a sign “Fruit Fly Exclusion Zone” worded something to the effect ‘if you have any fruit bought in a fruit fly zone, dispose of it in this bin’. We knew that SA has strict controls for the containment of fruit fly, but hadn’t realised that Victoria did too. So there we were, sitting in the car gobbling our grapes and bananas just in case!! Of course, nobody stopped us after that, and we’d probably have been OK, but weren’t prepared to take the risk or you could all have been bailing us out!
We decided as we had loads of time and couldn’t check into the Melbourne motel until 2.00pm, we’d detour up via the Dandenong mountains, just to the east of the city. They’ve built a new by-pass round Pakenham since the map book was printed, so instead of turning off there to start our detour, we ended up going on to Beaconsfield before finding the right road. In Emerald, we stopped for coffee and to get some information. Tom found a leaflet on the Puffing Billy train, which I had read about months ago in a travel supplement – it goes through Emerald! But it wasn’t due for some time, so we drove on to Menzies Creek, found a vantage point and were able to film and photograph it puffing through on its way to Emerald. What on earth would elf’n’safety have to say about this in UK?
We then did a quick drive down the road to the station and saw TWO Puffing Billies there at the same time! We’ll probably go back on one of our days here and take a trip – it won’t be quite as long or arduous as the Trans Alpine in NZ was!! (or as expensive!)We drove on through the forests to Belgrave and Sassafras (isn’t that a lovely name?) where we stopped and had a wander along with hundreds of others – it’s obviously the place to go on a Sunday afternoon. There are lots of nice little shops, although Tom was disappointed that the PC World was shut.
Still, there were tea rooms to visit and forest walks to go on, as well as lots of cyclists (VERY fit people as the hills are steep). It’s very pretty round there and for the first time since leaving NZ, we saw tree ferns in the forests. There are some jolly big tall trees there too and the foresters have been having a chopping session by the looks of it, as there were loads of areas with only tree stumps and lots of big logs. We found the World’s Best Gift Shop there – or so the notice proclaimed, and it did have an extraordinary array of gifts, not too expensive either. But we didn’t buy anything – we keep thinking of the stuff we’ve already collected!The next village on the road is Olinda – again a touristy place but pleasant, we may go back when we do the train trip. Mt Dandenong has the Skyline Lookout so we drove up through the forest and joined the hundreds of others enjoying the bracing air at the top! (It was blooming freezing!) The views are magnificent, real WOW factor, looking out over Melbourne, the central district of which looks like a series of spikes sticking up from a sea of housing.
The English Garden was a disappointment, as was the secret Garden, which didn’t contain much except for a seat, a statue and a gazebo – all designed as suitable backgrounds for wedding photos, but not much else. I sat in the Giant’s Chair – luckily he didn’t come along and demand it back while I was there, and met Mr Percy Possum – but he was asleep by his front door, so I didn’t disturb him!Then it was a very winding descent to Montrose where we joined Highway 32 into Melbourne. It was very busy but steady moving and we found our way to our new Motel, the Park Squire Motor Inn with no difficulty and signed in. It’s a bit further from the city centre than we thought, but the trams run right in front of it straight into the centre. We’ve just enjoyed a very nice fish and chip supper and are going to watch CSI in a few minutes so I’ll leave you for now. Byee!
PS I forgot to say yesterday that we were a bit flummoxed when we’d been in Victoria for some distance, and we came across a sign “Fruit Fly Exclusion Zone” worded something to the effect ‘if you have any fruit bought in a fruit fly zone, dispose of it in this bin’. We knew that SA has strict controls for the containment of fruit fly, but hadn’t realised that Victoria did too. So there we were, sitting in the car gobbling our grapes and bananas just in case!! Of course, nobody stopped us after that, and we’d probably have been OK, but weren’t prepared to take the risk or you could all have been bailing us out!
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