Australia 2009

OK, enough of the background - back to the adventure. We start off with a longish drive south to our first night’s stay; a place near Beechworth, Victoria which is about an hour south of the NSW border.

After a probably unjustified amount of random pottering and futzing about, we finally get on the road midmorning. We’re hearing west-ish towards the tiny town of Tooberac, just 10 km south of the slightly less tiny town of Heathcote.

After a good fry up to start the morning with a creeping coronary, we head off to Bendigo – a fairly sizable town in these parts (greater Bendigo population 100,000). Heck, let’s stick our neck out and call it a city.

Early start this morning – we’re on the road before sunrise (groan) and driving like a bat out of hell for Hahndorf, just east of Adelaide. Google maps has this trip as just shy of 700km (not the heart-stopping 16,100km it originally returned when it thought I was trying to make it to Hahndorf, Germany).

We’ve been spending the last three days hanging out at Black Rabbit Cottage in the McLaren Vale wine country, about 30 mins south of Adelaide. This is utter heaven for Lynn and I – a wonderful cottage to stay, stuck in beautiful countryside and surrounded some fantastic wineries.

After another late and lazy start to the morning, we swing by one of our favourite wineries (Hugo) to stock up and then head back to towards Adelaide. First stop – Stirling, just down the road from Hahndorf and home to a recently discovered bakery / foodie store that is simply marvellous.

For the last three days we taken a break from the country cottages for a slice of suburbia. Its proven hard to find anything in town, so we’re staying in this granny-flat kinda of place in the Adelaide suburb of St Georges. The place is a lot better than I make it sound.

This one is a painful, oh-my-God early start. We have a 7:15 am flight to catch, so we pack, prep and book a taxi the night before so that we can make a clean start this morning. After 30 minutes of waiting, the taxi is still a no show – grrrrr!.

30 Mar 2009 Today was a day of pampering. A friend of a friend (the actual connection is far too complex to relate here) has invited us...

On our way into Fremantle two days ago we stopped off at Cottesloe beach and were quite taken with it. It’s a very attractive little beachfront town with a great beach and some interesting places to eat. Unlike a lot of the coastal towns we’ve encountered so far, this guy seems to have found the secret recipe for success; so we decide to find somewhere to stay in the area, and end up at the 'Luxury Bungalow'.