Advertisement
Published: January 4th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Day 250 - Box Hill North to Rye (without the caravan!)
I must have been expecting the phone to ring because when it did, at 2.45am, it wasn’t a great surprise and I knew exactly who it would be! The Elliotts were finally seeing in the New Year along with Mirella & Mauritzio back in Perth. Beautiful! Thank you so much for the call guys, it was great to hear from you and know that you were having a grand time. Love, love, love!
5 minutes later, or so it seemed, I was wide awake lying next to a sleeping Darryl so I got up and went for a swim and a spa. Whilst in ‘Rome’ and all that! Unlike yesterday I had the place all to myself and sat gazing up through the glass ceiling at the rain pitter pattering down. The pool is on the 10th floor of the Rialto hotel so on a clear day it would be a good vantage point over the city, but not today! There I sat, making the most of having the luxury spa to myself and singing away oblivious to the people already working out in the gym behind me!
Oh well!
We’d missed a text from Mum on our mobile wishing us a Happy New Year and then there was another text from Dad’s sister Barb & her husband Tony saying that if ‘Mum hadn’t woken us up then she would, she would shout louder! Happy New Year!’. We did laugh. Thank you very much for that. Great to hear from you all and of course it came with updates on Dad’s progress as he continues to get fitter by the minute.
It was 8.30am on the first day of the new year, for us, but the UK still had 2 ½ hours to go before 2010 dawned for them. I’d not long been back in the room when the phone rang, it was Emma, Gos, Ed, Ray and Lisa, our much loved racing family who were out celebrating in the local social club. Good on you Em for making the call, it was great to hear all your voices. Hope everything went well and the hangovers weren’t too severe!
We watched the celebrations from around the world on the TV, there were some very impressive firework displays but Sydney seems to have beaten the lot!
The time had come for us to gather our belongings, check out and get a taxi back to Coll’s place to pick up the party gear we’d left there. Bless her, she had already done a fabulous job of clearing everything up. Talk about ‘leave no trace’! Thanks for having us over Coll and we really look forward to you visiting the UK so we can take you places you’ve never been before - like drag racing!
Back at home Grant cooked up a terrific breakfast which set us up for the rest of the day and while we headed for the beach house, he headed for bed as he’s back at work this afternoon for a few hours. There’s no rest for cops in a busy city.
Before we left Grant very kindly put our little car on their Citylink account which means we can now travel on the toll roads through Melbourne. What bliss that will be, no more mixing it up with the trams and the caravan for us! That made the journey down to the beach house far more simplistic and it really does save time. We're travelling without the caravan, there really
isn't anywhere for us to park her up at the beach house as the drive is on a slope so we've gracefully given in and accepted the offer of James's room for the night!
We’re greeted by the girls, the dogs and of course Bill and Helen (Anna’s parents) who we’re delighted to catch up with again. We excitedly tell them snippets from our travels so far and are soon having great discussions about this fabulous country. Bill does read the blog from time to time so there's quite alot of banter about the bits he already knows about plus the fact that we missed him by days back in Scarborough.
Could it have been coincidence that on the day Grant is away working we opt for a fish and chip dinner as we've lost our chef?! No offense Dar! We headed into Rye but the place is jam packed with tourists and we get a total shock at how busy the foreshore camping areas are. You literally cannot move for camp trailers, caravans and tents. Apparently generations of families come here every year to get the same spot for the festive period. We suspect it's a sign
of the busy season head of us when we venture back through South Australia. We've been thoroughly spoilt on this trip experiencing so many places out of season and blissfully tranquil, that's all about to change!
The kids are teasing Darryl and announcing he's won prize of a 45 minute wait which is how long it's going to take for our dinner to be cooked so they happily play in the park while we chat with Anna. There's no denying it was worth the wait, the fish was yummy but sadly there was none left for Grant even though he did make it down to the beach house in a record 1 hr and 2 minutes after an early release from work.
We’re all a bit whacked so hit the sack around midnight but before that we were excited to hear about the Europe / USA / Canada trip being planned for 2011 by Grant & Anna, hopefully we’ll be able to join in for some of it with our new ‘travelling eyes’ wide open and up for anything!
Dar and Sar
Advertisement
Tot: 0.496s; Tpl: 0.016s; cc: 22; qc: 124; dbt: 0.2531s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.4mb