Thursday, December 3rd, Drive from Lakes Entrance to Phillips Island
Bob: I felt strangely reluctant to leave our comfortable hotel suite with its living room, fully equipped kitchenette, and marvelous view out over the water, but it was time to move on. We first followed the Princess Highway westward in the general direction of Melbourne. We left the Princess Highway at the town of Sale in favor of a more southerly course that would ultimately bring us down to the coast and westward to Phillip Island, which was our next major destination. An advantage of diverging from the Princess Highway at Sale was that just outside the town in the direction of Yarram we found a sign to a "Powder Magazine" and turned off to take a look at it. The powder magazine turned out to be an official government repository for the black gunpowder used in blasting the rock in the mining operations in Victoria in the 1800s. The old, brick building with small, high windows wasn't much to look at but it now contained a small museum. I would have been interested in seeing that, of course, but it was unfortunately closed. |
Monika: There was another Volksmarch in the nearby town of Bairnsdale, but it did not sound as pretty as Lakes Entrance and we were really ready to get on our way. I wanted to get to Phillips Island to see the penguins. We were not sure whether we could do the drive in one day, but we wanted to get as far as we could so we decided to forego the Volksmarch in Bairnsdale and forge on. The first 100 km was on the Princes Highway one of the two major highways from Sydney to Melbourne. The lanes were nice and wide and overtaking lanes (passing lanes) came quite often. There were relatively few trucks, since the other highway, the Hume Highway, is more direct and 4 lanes at all times and seems to be preferred by commercial traffic. But the tourist and sightseers drive the Princes Highway, and since they often try to drive for too long a period at once, the state of Victoria has put up a lot of what Bob and I started to cally "Nanny Signs", reminding one to rest frequently. While New South Wales stuck to one driving caution: "Stop, Revive, Survive" (kind of short and to the point), Victoria had several. My favorite was "Drowsy Drivers Die", but there also was the ever popular "Slowing Down Wont't Kill You" or "Yawning? A Microsleep can Kill". You get the idea. I kept trying to take good pictures of the signs, not easy from a moving vehicle, and that really kept us entertained. [Maybe they should have included cautionary signs about taking pictures while driving, something along the lines of "That's a Picture to Die For!"] We reached the town of Sale, where the Princes Highway went more or less straight west and we decided to take the coastal route to the south. While driving out of town, we saw a sign for a wetlands walk and a powder magazine. It was about time for a stop, so we decided to take a look. We almost missed the powder magazine, but when we got there, it was a really pretty brick building. The powder that was stored here was for the gold mining in the area and it was the only original building that had survived. |
Bob: But since we were out of the car by the time I determined that the museum was closed, we decided to walk a bit on the trail that went past the powder magazine. That trail joined a walking loop around a pretty lake. The lakeside trail had been decorated with paintings done by two local aboriginal artists, and we found them to be fascinating. Each wood panel was painted with a theme such as "How the Robin got his red breast". One side of the panel would be a more western-style representation of the theme, but on the reverse side we found the same theme painted in what I take to be the ancient, original style of aboriginal art. Seeing art with natural themes displayed in a natural, outdoors setting somehow seemed very aesthetically appropriate to me; those paintings would really not fit as well inside a gallery someplace. |
Monika: From the powder magazine we walked to a small lake that had a nice path to walk around it; All along the path were wood plaques with paintings on each side, two aboriginal artists interpreting the same story. One was somewhat modern, the other more traditional, and both were very interesting. |
Bob: As we circled Lake Graham to the other side we found a sculpture garden. Besides a giant maze with painted panels, we found several large wooden sculptures, again of natural animals. The turtle sculpture reminded me of a Galapagos tortoise and the frog was as cute as a button, but the boa constrictor (anaconda?) sculpture took me aback a bit. It was rather realistic and very large, and if I had really found myself that close to a snake that big, I would have been in big trouble. Still the sculpture garden was a lot of fun. |
Monika: At one end of the lake was a little shallower place, where the water birds had congegrated: two black swans with a young one, a couple of geese, a pelican, and some comerants, all very picturesque. Here we also saw some carved-wood sculptures, a snake and a frog, and a very interesting outdoor sun clock. The sun clock required a person standing in a certain position to raise his arm, whereupon his shadow would point to the correct time (see Bob demonstrating below). Of course, the time was off by an hour, since Australia was on Daylight Savings Time during out visit. |
Bob: After backtracking a bit to Sale for lunch of roasted chicken at a Red Rooster (highly recommended if you want a grilled chicken meal but want it fast), we drove on to Yarram over some of the straightest, flattest roads I experienced in Australia aside from the road from Dubbo to Broken Hill in the Outback. The landscape was similar to the flat savannah with trees that characterizes central Florida in the United States, and just about as uninteresting. Monika amused herself by trying to take pictures of the variety of warning signs the state of Victoria had posted (see above). But I was bored (which didn't happen often while driving in Australia!), so I was just as happy when we turned westward and started driving through some hillier countryside where the foothills of the Australian Alps just to the north came marching down to the sea. The driving became more difficult, but it certainly kept me awake! The countryside still seemed to be mainly pastureland for cattle and sheep although I'm pretty sure I saw some herds of Holstein dairy cows also. |
Monika: When we got back to the car, we decided it was lunchtime, and since Bob had seen a Red Rooster in town, we decided to head for it. The Red Rooster is an Australian fast food chain that features grilled chicken. We both had grilled chicken on a baguette with plenty of lettuce and tomatoes and we shared an order of chips. A rather satisfying lunch. The first part from Sale to Foster of the coastal road reminded us both of Florida. The land was relatively flat, and the road was straight as an arrow. But we now were on a "B" road, no more wide shoulders or overtaking lanes (or nanny signs), but we still had side markings and middle stripes that indicated whether it was safe to pass. We made one quick stop when we saw a spiny, vaguely porcupine-shaped kind of animal rooting around at the side of the road, which turned out to be an echidna (we think!). |
Bob: We stopped at the Tourist Information Centre at Wonthaggi and accumulated maps and information on where to stay in the region. We decided to push on to Cowes on Phillip Island and see if we could find a place there as that would minimize our driving distance to see any of the attractions on the island itself. The last section of driving to the island was complicated by some really strong, gusty sidewinds and although the Getz had guts enough for climing hills, it proved to be rather susceptible to crosswinds. So it started dancing all over the road as the wind gusts batted it from side to side and I had my hands full just keeping it in our lane as we crossed first a narrow isthmus and then a bridge to get onto Phillips Island itself. By the time we reached Cowes, I was exhausted. After we signed in for two nights at the Seahorse Hotel, I promptly fell asleep for a couple of hours while Monika read. Then we had a simple dinner and went shopping for groceries for the next few days before settling in for the night. But right about sunset Monika suggested we wander over to the beach on the bay side of the island, which was only two blocks away from our motel. That was easy enough, so we walked over there and took some pictures of the clouds brilliantly illuminated in a ruddy orange by the sun setting on the other side of the island. Then Monika turned to updating her journal while I just read a bit to unwind from the day's drive. |
Monika: After Foster it got more interesting. My map indicated one road that would take us to Phillip Island. However, it turned out that it was a mixture of "B" and "C" (no side markings) road and I had to carefully monitor where we were driving with the map and the GPS. But we got safely to Wonthaggi about 30 km east of Phillips Island. There we stopped at the Information Center and found out that Phillip Island had indeed enough to do for a full day. Besides the Penguin Parade, when in the evening the penguins come back to their home burrows, there was a Koala reserve and an old homestead. So we decided to forge ahead to Cowes, the big town on the island. By now the sky had clouded over and the wind was starting to blow rather strongly. Bob had a tough time keeping our little car in its lane, especially when we went over the bridge onto the island and along the first narrows. We were happy to reach Cowes and stopped at a nice looking motel, the Seahorse Motel. They had a room for two nights and we settled in. Bob, poor guy, was of course exhausted after the drive and fell promptly asleep while I read. When he woke up, we decided to have our evening meal. This morning I had hardboiled the last eggs we had bought in Lakes Entrance, so we had first egg and then cheese on toast, since this place boasted of a toaster besides a water heater and a refrigerator. But we did decide we needed milk and cereal for the next morning. The wind had finally brought some rain and now everything had cleared and it was a nice walk two blocks to the center of town where there was a Coles grocery store. Back at the motel we settled to some serious reading (Bob) and writing (me, surprise, surprise) until I noticed that the sun was going down. Since we were only two blocks from the beach, I got Bob to walk with me to the beach, where we really did get some very nice evening pictures. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Cruise around New Zealand | Map of Drive through Victoria | Epilog |
|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||