Blogs from Victoria, Australia, Oceania - page 9

We wake up feeling not all that well rested. The gent in the next room seemed to think it was a good idea to spend most of the night on the phone on the balcony right outside our door in loud discussion with one of his business partners. If that wasn’t enough the local hoons then sounded like they'd decided last night was as good a time as any to test out the motel drive’s suitability for use as a speedway. Issy tells me that exposed brickwork in motel rooms gives her the creeps, and that I should try to avoid this in future. "No exposed brickwork" isn't an obvious filter on any of the booking sites I've used recently, so I suspect I might be in trouble later. We head back to the port for ... read more

Sadly the UooUoo trail had to come to an end and Alex kindly managed to get a ticket to the auction event so we could be part of the action ! This virtual experience has been so popular that heygo added more spaces so that as many people as possible could enjoy the final journeys of the Uoo Uoo’s that they had been hunting over the past months. Canapés & drinks were served, the excitement was rising. Alex managed to find a good position so that we could see the large screen showing the progress of each lot as it came up for auction. The chat was buzzing with people saying “higher, higher” or “oh no I thought it would have gone for more than that”. Many heygo followers had their favourites and were a little ... read more

1st March - Brighton Beach Beach Huts #heygo http://www.heygo.com Our tour started in front of Brighton Beach Hotel, Established as the Royal Terminus Hotel in the 1840s, Brighton Beach Hotel remains one of Brighton's oldest landmarks. Once formerly well known as Milano’s Tavern, Brighton Beach Hotel is the second hotel south of the Yarra River and originally built of local red ironstone. The hotel was once so remote that it was bailed up by bushrangers. Very quickly the establishment of five gracious sitting rooms, seven bedrooms for 30 shillings a week and stables became a destination resort. Also for hire were the prototype bathing boxes, these were wheeled into the bay for a healthy sea dip. Today, the altered but recognisable "Georgian" facade has witnessed it all and is classified by the National Trust. We walked ... read more

Fresh from my week on the Great Ocean Walk, I headed to the regional centre of Warrnambool to stock up with another week's worth of supplies, before continuing along the coast by coach to Portland, where I had ambitious plans for another biathlon of sorts - only this time instead of cycling and drinking my chosen disciplines would be walking and paddling. With school holidays (and the ensuing stampede for campsites that they inevitably bring) fast approaching, I had set myself the challenge of hiking 250km and paddling a further 50km in a kayak in the eighteen days remaining before the start of the Easter long weekend - which appropriately enough would fall on the evening of April 1st. The way I saw it, anyone still out adventuring by that date truly would be an April ... read more

While pretty much everyone has heard of the Great Ocean Road that runs for 250km from Torquay to Warnambool in south-western Victoria, not so well known is the Great Ocean Walk that traces a line along part of the same stretch of coast for 100km from Apollo Bay to the (misnamed) Twelve Apostles. And while the road follows the shoreline for eighty breathtaking kilometres between Anglesea and Apollo Bay, beyond this it heads inland for a further eighty kilometres through the rainforests of the Otway Ranges, only reaching the sea again at the Twelve Apostles. This is great news for people such as myself, as it means that self-sufficient hikers tackling the Great Ocean Walk have a spectacular stretch of coastline all to ourselves! Well, almost. With three weeks having passed since I came down from ... read more