Skip to main content

Church bells, jelly slices and ice cream

Dong. Dong. Dong. And four more. St Paul's Church across the road provides a Sunday morning wake up alarm whether we like it or not.

For me, not. I had a headachy night with weird dreams. First thing I do when I get up is take a covid rapid antigen test (negative).

Eight chimes and then a celebratory carillon performance. 

I walk across to K-mart and Coles to buy some supplies for nights indoors on our holiday. 

It is quite late and we'll past breakfast when we head out down to the country town of Beechworth. It is nice to be off the motorway, driving through the hills, archways of trees above us, autumn colour around.

The Beechworth Bakery is full of tourists as we eat meat pies for brunch, pastries for treats and take away jelly slices and pink lamingtons for a later dessert. I buy more cordials and local vegetables for the trip, but we have had enough of quirky shops yesterday.

The motorway to Melbourne is too familiar and boring, but not as stressful as I feared as I did not need to enter the city proper. I'm so focused on the road I can't enjoy what scenery there is and the many memories of the ride towards Geelong.

We stop in Geelong's city centre because B wants to try the Asian Essence Malaysian restaurant. The timing is too late for lunch and too early for dinner, so we order takeaway and continue on towards Barwon Heads.

The bright blue sky has clouded over with big cumulus clouds and the evening light is gorgeous as we drive the country road to the coast. 

Before we relax in our accommodation we head into the centre of Barwon Heads to pick up some supplies. First we buy ice creams and take an evening stroll along the bridge across the river. It is so beautiful here and I have so many childhood memories of staying in the caravan park, strolling beneath the lamps, watching the Point Lonsdale lighthouse flash in the distance as cars rattle across the bridge.

Our accommodation is a lovely cottage that is perfectly equipped for relaxing in, with couches, daybeds, National Geographic magazines and old books.

The Malaysian food is really good, one of the best beef rendangs I've tasted and excellent sambal. I think we might make another visit on the way out

But right now a Panadol and a sleep is in order. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ho Chi Minh to Hoi An

The easy way to get to Hoi An from Ho Chi Minh City is to fly to Danang then go via car for the final leg. Then there's my way. We had to wake at 5.30 am to get ready for a 6.15 departure from the hotel. A hotel car took us the few kilometres to the domestic terminal at the airport, where we checked into our Vietnam Airlines flight to the central Vietnam city of Hue. The airport was nothing flash, but it seemed functional. Alex had sandwiches (refused banh mi) for breakfast, then we went to the gate. Our blue Airbus A321 was parked at a remote stand, which necessitated a packed shuttle bus ride. It was nice to be aboard a full service airline again, even if the service was just a cup of water. We took off over the hazy skies of Ho Chi Minh City and for most of the smooth flight were cruising over a carpet of cloud. We descended over mountains poking their heads through the cloud, across lakes and paddy fields and over the beach. It was lovely scenery.
4 comments
Read more

A lazy day at the beach

It's 2am and somebody is still setting fireworks off on the beach in front of the hotel. I can't see the explosions as I have the window shuttered, but I can still hear them. I've wanted to have a lazy day and today was the closest I got. I woke up in the night from a very sad dream. Dreams follow crazy paths, but this one resolved itself as so. An entity had been causing disruption of computer systems around the world. It turned out that this entity had emerged from the computer networks and had been struggling to gain access to more computing power so that it could live. The entity had taken on the persona of a woman. The protagonist who had "defeated" the entity discovered that it was alive, spoke to it. Ultimately fell in love with her. But his prior actions would lead to its death. As a gift to her he downloaded his memories so that she could experience life even as she died. I know it sounds like a pulpy sf or technopunk plot, but dreams are about feelings,
2 comments
Read more

The Carlingford Line

We close the year and the decade with a local adventure to mark the closure of a railway line. On the January 5, 2020, the Carlingford Line from Clyde will close to be partially replaced by the Parramatta Light Rail. This is Sydney's quietest line, a single track branch for most of its length from the industrial centre of Clyde to the northwestern suburb of Carlingford. According to Wikipedia, power supply and signalling issues mean that only a single four car train can utilise the line at a time. Newer Sydney trains run in fixed eight car configurations. This will be the first and last time I traverse the Carlingford Line in its current configuration. The weather of the day is certainly appropriate for an ending, the brown smoke haze lending an apocalyptic air to proceedings. I drive to Padstow and catch the T8 line to Central, followed by the T1 towards Parramatta and Penrith. The historic homes of the Inner West give way to industrial complexes, rail storage yards and t
4 comments
Read more