Thursday, 8th February 2018
Recovered from last night’s fatigue and woke up at 8am because my alarm went off – Gerry was already up and had gone to get the car which was parked outside the premises. So after showering, packing our stuff, and enjoyed breakfast we were ready to leave on our drive to Melbourne. The plan was that we would drive on the A1 – which we did last night in the dark – to just a little bit further than Colac and turn down right to Lorne and continue our drive along the Great Ocean Road to finally arrive in Melbourne – St Kilda’s Novotel.
Our plan was a good one but Serena from our TomTom GPS had other plans for us – as we hadn’t given her any instructions to drive to Melbourne through Colac and Great ocean Road, she sent us on the most direct route to Melbourne. Instead of going down to the coast, we were sent inland!!! We realised this when it was too late to return so kept going along narrow country roads up to Lisemore where we arrived onto B140 road which would also go straight to Melbourne. We drove further to Inverleigh and after first having coffee at one of the oldest hotels in the area, we then drove down again on a narrow country road with a few road works going on and finally arrived at Winchelsea and from there drove through the Otway National Park forest to Lorne. A trip which was supposed to have taken some 1.5 hours was extended by the same time before we arrived in Lorne.
Once in Lorne, we picked up the coast road again and this time we had the rugged cliffs on our left hand side with beautiful stretches of beaches on the right and of course curves along the way. We stopped at a pretty stop in Anglesea – dark orange cliffs hanging into the ocean – and had lunch .
Finally we were on the motorway to Melbourne – St. Kilda – and once again we made the error of not looking up all the street names – 16, The Esplanade – and we ended up in Caroline Springs which was some 33 km away from our Hotel!! back in the traffic jams we finally made it to the Novotel on the Esplanade in St.Kilda – and what a beautiful area this is in Melbourne. Victorian type of houses mixed with new style, a Luna park and beach just in from of the hotel and a tram line nr 96 which took us downtown!
Although we had driven some 350 km and taken some 6 hours to arrive at our hotel (with various stops of course), we had enough energy to explore the town in the evening and also enjoyed one of the best meals along the Yarra River next to the extraordinary Casino on the the Southbank Promenade. Tomorrow promises to be an exciting day to explore Melbourne!
