Skip to main content

Ozone layers

The city across the bay is so far away it might be another world, as unreachable as your past. Yet here I am reliving a childhood of escaping that city for the peace of Bellarine.

I'm not certain I ever visited Portarlington, but it is now part of our story. We are back to buy seafood for our dinner. Then a late breakfast, disappointing, from the bakery. 

We take a scenic drive along the coast and the flat waters of the bay, stop at Indented Head. A small boat is being loaded on to a trailer as we wall along the small wooden jetty into the blue waters. 

It is so quiet here, so calm. The water sparkles, flickering reflections of the sun are stars in a sea. We take a stroll. Grasses and shrubs separate the path from the course sand and shell beach. To our left, high pines shelter a flock of galahs. 
We walk as far as the rusted wreck of the Ozone, a paddlesteamer deliberately sunk here in 1925. One wheel still stands out of the water, inhabited by a couple of fluorescently clad fishermen. 

Pelicans and cormorants rest on a line of rocks. 

Our drive continues on away from the coast and back to Queenscliff, where we have a lunch from the famous Trident Fish Bar, my favourite fish and chips shop. 

A detour in Ocean Grove for some ingredients for the mussels and fish we will be cooking for dinner tonight. Then rest at the cottage, a chance to read a book I have found there. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

IKEA Museum

We have a packed itinerary today. Flat packed and assembled with an Allen key. There are patches of snow on the ground that weren't there the previous evening. We are a bit sad to leave the Duxiana after the comfy beds and the breakfast of cold cuts, fruits and hot waffles. I tried the Swedish caviar on my boiled egg. It was... Interesting. I was very disappointed to realise that, after talking it up for months, I had forgotten the Disgusting Foods Museum in Malmö yesterday. Too late now. We catch another Oresundstag train, for a bit over an hour. Past yesterday's Lund, past increasingly white fields and towns to Älmhult, home of IKEA. The conductor warns us that the train will split in two so we have to move carriages forward. Unfortunately, there we no spare sets of chairs for all of us. The IKEA Museum showcases the history of the furniture company, along with temporary exhibitions. One of these was "Hacking IKEA," about using IKEA ob...

Asagaya and heading home

How can I be happy? I am about to return to a country where the toilets have at most two buttons and no seat warmers. But the tickets are booked and there are no cyclones, typhoons or other disasters standing in our way. It's almost time to go back to my first home. First B wants to do some "local shopping". So we catch the Chuo Line up a few stations to Asagaya, a residential area with a number of Shotengai, covered and uncovered arcades leading away from the station and narrow alleys lined with bars. It is an interesting area for a wander around. We are mainly looking, do some shopping for toothbrushes and sweets from Seiyu, a Wal-Mart owned supermarket/minor department store. We skipped breakfast and lunch is ramen and gyoza at a small restaurant near the entrance to the Pearl Centre shotengai. With the help of a staff member, I manage to purchase tickets at a branch of Lawson to the Ghibli Museum for a friend travelling to Japan in May. There are some...