Aly's Blog: Heading South

The real reason we needed the rental car was because we had decided to drive along the south coast for a few days and had already booked and paid for a condo at a little resort town in their busiest Christmas season, non-refundable. We headed out of Melbourne by 9am and drove south through Geelong, then inland and due west to Warrnambool (ps, the natives looved doouble 'oo' and dooble consonants in all location nammes). The drive reminded Jeff of the German country side with rolling hills and farm land and me of the Okanagan. 3.5 hours later we dropped into Warrnambool to get the keys to our mansion, it was seriously huge relative to Australia city homes with almost the exact layout of my parent's house. All modern and immaculately kept in a great location (just blocks from the best ice cream shop!) off the main street heading to the beach. I had the best lunch of our trip in one of the many Asian/Indian influence restaruants - a seafood Thai stirfry that was so authentic and filled with double the seafood of any other meal for half the price. Anyway, my love and appreciation of great food does not stop, even on holidays.

We continued 20km up the road by recommendation of Mark to Port Fairy, another popular but smaller holiday destination. Mark even gave us the address to the surf shop to rent wet suits and boogie boards. Suited up we went to the recommended East Beach to give it a go. Gorgeous miles of flour-like sand in a gentle C with waves rolling in just perfect for riding. The beach is quite shallow for a long way so even though the waves come right from the open ocean, they are perfect by the time they reach us. Not quite big enough to surf on but there were some beginners getting the feel of it. The boys are so light that even the smallest wave took them all the way into to shore without any resistance. Jeff and I had to seek out the larger waves and hop on before they crested in order to really go for a ride. The water was very clear.....and cold, thus the wet suits. Warmer than I expected but it does come up from the Antarctic so think Vancouver in July ocean temperature.

Back to our condo for showers and exploring before dinner. We fell in love with Warrnambool! Lots of parks, play structures and board walks with gorgeous beaches and sand, a huge skate park better than Calgary, great food and variety and fascinating history. It is pricey during the holiday season and because it is so far south, it's best likely in January/February to get some really warm days. This part of the south is called the Shipwreck Coast because over 80 ships went down along the rocky stretch and 5 of them are just off Warrnambool. This is also the 3rd largest lava plain in the world, formed by thousands of ancient volcanos leaving rich, fertile soil for growing crops.

After dinner on the waterfront seeing the waves roll in on beautiful landscape, we drove 15km down the road Tower Hill Nature Reserve, on a few miles inland where the world opens up into a huge crater created 30,000 years ago and is now a small lake. Around 8pm all the wildlife come out (apparently Hamilton Island is not the only place) and there is a small road down through the crater and around the park. All the animals are wild there and we saw a Koala family with a small baby in a tree, Emus with babies, Brown and red Kangaroos, black swans and babies (out in the lake) within just a few metres of the car.