On the Move

Portsea Bath Houses


You can trust us!


Duck Point Tinny


Wilson Prom Dawn


Mallacoota Fishin'

Happy Vendredi Gras!

I figured that since Mardi Gras was for "Fat Tuesday" then the day after Thanksgiving should be Fat Friday after everyone has stuffed themselves full of good food and great company.

We have traveled from Mallacoota over on the Victoria-New South Wales border to Wilson's Promontory to the town of Red Hill on the Mornington Peninsula via a circuit of Phillip Island all within a week. Wilson's Prom, as it is known is a great national park and one of the most visited in Victoria as it is only an hour and a half from Melbourne. We stayed outside the park in a caravan park in Yanakie. The scenery was great, even if the accommodations and the park staff were less than stellar. We hiked our feet off on the Prom and climbed Mt. Oberon, which brought new definition to the phrase, "Are we there yet?" The view from the top was well worth the climb.

Our stay in Red Hill has been another happy accident, something that is one of the continuing joys of this trip. We didn't want to spend the last few days before we take the ferry across to Tasmania in Melbourne so we decided to hit the Mornington Peninsula on the way. I was looking at places and went from one link to another to a third and found the Ellisfield Farm. It is a cherry farm with a small cottage on the grounds and has what are termed "farm pets" of alpacas, ducks, chickens and goats! So, we simply had to come here. The animals are delightful and the goats (a mother and two small kids) are full of play. One, named Cuddles, loves to escape the fenced area and play in the cherry orchard, but we fixed that for the owners so she can't escape again.

We have been down to the coastal towns of Rosebud, Rye, Portsea and Sorrento today and enjoyed them, especially Sorrento which reminded us of Nantucket. Very wealthy and trendy, but nice.

Tomorrow we sail for Tasmania from Melbourne. The ferry is a night crossing to Devonport and the guide books say that the best thing about Devonport is seeing it in your rear-view mirror as you go see the rest of Tasmania. We hope it is better than this, but even if not, we aren't staying there anyway. Allie found a place to stay through the gardening community network. Apparently gardeners are rabid sharers and that includes homes. She found a fellow gardener in South Hobart who needed a house sitter for 6 weeks, from the beginning of December to mid-Janauary and got in touch with her and voila, we have a place to base ourselves from during an extended stay on the Apple Island. Tasmania is called the "Apple Isle" for its history of producing immense crops of apples shipped all over the world, although that has diminished with the spread of globalization and refrigeration.

Here's a sample of what we've seen in the past week. Enjoy!

Steve