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Published: February 9th 2006
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View from Mt. Bishop
A little foggy and muddy up there but a good work out especially since I've been on the lazy side the last while. :) Onward to Sydney
Four days. Stop in Canberra.
Full bus of 18.
Well, this is my last leg of my bus journey in Australia - Melbourne to Sydney. I will be making a four day stopover in the capital, Canberra and stay with John and Annie and hopefully meet up with Stacey who used to be the receptionist where I worked. Seven weeks gone, less than two weeks to go here in Australia. As is the case every time I leave a country, I always feel a little sad to say goodbye. But also what normally happens is when I arrive in my next country I'm so excited I forget about the previous country I was just so "sad to leave" in a heartbeat. Okay, so I'm easily distracted and have a short term memory. lol
Today's bus is pretty full especially in comparison to the buses I've been on since Alice Springs. Today I'm travelling with 17 others plus our driver, Thommo. I've managed to chat up a few people already. Mary from Denmark, Ashley from Cornwall (born in Kamloops), Nick from Liverpool and Lucy from London. Our driver, Thommo, has just come back from being on vacation and is super keen. So it looks like we'll be having a good time the next four days. He's especially excited about heading towards the snow in Jindabyne. He's only seen the snow two times in his life.
We drove up to Foster and had an early lunch. I just went to a local cafe/bakery and ordered a sandwich from the deli with beetroot of course! I sat at a table with Mary, Catherine from Norway (who apparently was on the same bus as me from Brisbane to Hervey Bay!), Donna from England and Nick. We were given just over an hour for lunch...loads of time so we just sat around the cafe finding out where people are from and where they've been etc. You know the usual stuff you seem to talk about with fellow travellers when you first meet them. 😊
We headed back to the bus and instead of doing introductions at the front of the bus we were told to sit in a different seat and get to know someone you haven't talked to yet. So basically the people at the back of the bus sat at the front and vice versa. Wait a sec...how are we going to be able to talk to someone different? LOL Somehow we sorted ourselves out and managed to talk to people we hadn't talked to before. Sort of!
I ended up talking to Donna, Ashley, Catherine, Nick, Paul from Edmonton/Calgary, Arna from Edmonton, Harvey from Singapore and Lucy. Funny that several people on the bus throughout the day thought I was travelling with first Mary, then Ashley and then Nick. Can I help it if I'm friendly? Okay, so I can talk too much at times. lol
It was about a 45 minute drive to Wilson's Promontory National Park where we were going to go for a 3.7 km (one way) trek up Mt. Bishop. The trek was a gradual climb - the way I like it BUT it was really muddy. I thought I was going to slip for sure but managed to walk away with just a bit of mud on my boots and at the bottom of my jeans. The views up there were pretty good but would have been even better if the sun was out and it wasn't so darn misty out.
We took another short walk to Squeaky Beach where a wombat was spotted. Cute and huge! We stayed by the water for a bit watching the waves and kicking our feet in the sand. In my opinion the sand was not all that squeaky sounding! lol It was really fine though so it stuck really great onto the fresh mud that was already caked onto our boots. All I can say it made for one messy floor on the bus!
For dinner we had a barbeque feast. Yummy marinated steaks, a hugeass pile of veggies, mashed potatoes and sausages too! There was another bus heading from Sydney to Melbourne at the same place we were staying at but we didn't really mingle with them since most of them seemed headed for the pub and our group just hung around the heater chatting. Somehow our group ended up doing all of the dishes! Oh well, better karma for us. LOL
It was a pretty chilly night out so we all eventually retreated back to our rooms especially since the heater by the outdoor eating area ran out of gas and it got cool pretty darn quick! In our room there was Donna, Catherine, Mary, Ashley and Lucy. The accommodations were pretty good. Each room had its own ensuite bathroom with shower, a kitchenette and television too! By the time we retreated to our room it was way too early to go to bed so we plugged in the portable heater (not a computer speaker as Lucy originally thought...) and switched on the telly. Live 8 was on so we watched some of the acts. Some good, some not so good...
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