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Published: February 6th 2010
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Kalvin's 'prize' catch!
The tiny unfortunate Garfish that was hooked somehow by Kalvin Day 282 - Princetown to Peterborough
We’d spent most of our time in the caravan last night so it was a bit of a surprise to find we had camping neighbours on our trip to the amenity block. In my bumbling state I flashed our torch right at them which was rather rude but a quick apology seemed to go down ok! By the time we surfaced in the morning they were already partly packed up and were heading for a quick exit, unlike us!
As I worked on a couple of blogs, Dar boiled eggs for breakfast (yum) and then we set off towards Julie’s beach house in Peterborough. When we get there she’s busy painting the front of the house but that doesn’t stop her from giving us a tremendous welcome and immediately making us feel completely relaxed.
Peterborough itself is a small, beautiful, non-touristy coastal town with bundles of character and charm. It’s built around the mouth of the Curdies River and is just perfectly placed for exploring the Great Ocean Road … but nobody has ever mentioned Peterborough to us until now. It’s a very well kept secret, so please don’t tell!
Julie
has friend and fellow teacher Kalvin staying at the beach house too, plus she’s expecting more friends to arrive this afternoon but she still insists that we bring the caravan here and park on her front lawn for as long as we would like. What a great idea and one which would be really great to take up but we’ve already parted with our $20 for a pitch at the camping reserve back in Princetown. After a nano-second of consideration we give Julie a hug and set off to collect the caravan!
It’s a short journey and when I pop in to let the camp host know that we won’t be staying after-all she immediately gives us our money back without me even prompting. I’m astounded and very grateful for the gesture of goodwill, I really didn’t expect that at all and all this generosity put a real spring in our step for the rest of the day.
Back at Julie’s we set the caravan up and sat chatting over a “breakfast” beer! Kalvin had gone out fishing but returns shortly with his haul - the tiniest garfish any of us has ever seen! He had a few
other bites but didn’t manage to catch anything despite being very encouraged by others who had snagged a fairly big salmon. Nevermind, there’s always tomorrow!
It was great fun getting to know Julie and Kalvin better, they’re both exceptionally interesting people and have some terrific stories between them. The Reeves (our very good friends & Julie’s next door neighbours back in Mansfield) were right when they said we would just love Julie! Kalvin is about to embark on a huge trip around South America, on a push bike! We’re a bit astounded by that, in our book that’s huge especially as the people we’ve met who have travelled through the country can fill weeks with their stories of bribery and corruption. We don’t go on and on about it for fear of scaring him to death before he’s even started!
We’re also able to indulge our ‘dog loving’ nature as Julie has a beautiful border collie called Lira. She’s such a lovely dog and is very relaxed with us being around but she’s a one woman dog and adores Julie. She loves a bit of a fuss but she’s not afraid to let you know when she’s had
Here's to the Reeves family
With Julie on the veranda raising a glass to Simone, Mark, Zoe, Ken and Beth who put us in touch! enough!
The afternoon chat was extended by the arrival of Janet and Al who also live in Mansfield. They’re good company too, very friendly and the witty ‘out there’ conversations continue well into the afternoon.
Just to break things up a bit we headed down to the beach at the Bay of Martyrs for a swim and a bit of a snorkel. The water was flipping freezing when we first got in but after a while we were too numb to care anymore and the longer we stayed the more pleasant it became. The waves were pretty full on and everyone got dunked at some stage with the exception of Lira who didn’t even get her paws wet!
We’re cooking up a mixture for dinner tonight, Darryl’s creating Thai Green Curry and Al has brought along actual road kill kangaroo! Well this is a first on our travels, real road kill. The poor kangaroo was found close to Al and Janet’s home when they were returning from a night out in town. It wasn’t there on the outbound journey so they knew it was pretty fresh. Al made a quick trip home for suitable knives and then voila
Real actual roadkill!
Before it hit the BBQ! - roo streaks for dinner! In all honesty it's probably the tastiest roo that we've eaten on our trip thus far, very tender, succulent and bouncy!
With a few beers and glasses of wine the evening flowed along accompanied by stories around the table. One of our favourites was told by Julie about a lad trying out for school captain. He was quite a shy boy and probably wasn’t seen as a strong candidate until the day of the deciding speech. When he took to the podium he spoke about his vision for his fellow year students and openly said he wasn’t sure what he had to offer them but that he wanted to tell them a story. He spoke abut two mice stranded in a churn full of milk. He talked about their struggle for survival and how the one mouse gave up quite easily but the other mouse kept paddling and paddling and paddling until eventually he paddled so much the milk turned to butter and he could climb out of the churn. The lad stood there and rejoiced ‘I want to be that mouse’ and the school erupted in support with cheering and applause all around.
And did he make school captain, of course he did!
The sunset lured us back to the cliff tops and the sky really turned it on for us. We haven’t seen a good sunset for ages so it was worth the effort of leaving our comfy surrounds. Red sky at night shepherds delight so it should be another nice day again tomorrow.
To send us all off to bed there was the sampling of a rather tasty liqueur sourced from Maleny (Queensland) by Al on a previous trip. It was just enough to send us sweetly back to the caravan for a good sleep!
Dar and Sar
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Allie
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Gorgeous Sunsets
Hello Both, You both look well in your pictures and very relaxed and happy, hope that this is the case. Sounds like your travels are taking you to some lovely places again and meeting wonderful people. I bet that you are excited about going to Tasmania - have a great time. Lots of Love Allie & Kev xxx