Melbourne 2023

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After almost forty hours (door to door) travel time, we settled into our accommodations at Sanctuary Lakes which is about 1/2 hour drive outside of Melbourne. Despite all the news coverage on disruptions, our travel through 4 airports was seamless and we arrived on time at destination, with our luggage and golf clubs. Most flights were with Air New Zealand which we consider the best of any airlines we’ve taken. Their service and efficiency was excellent. Not sure it’s an appropriate linkage, but airlines tend to reflect on their country of origin. I hope Air Canada's passengers don’t assume that Canada operates the same way as our national carrier!!!

It‘s hard to understand why cell phone costs in Canada are so much more expensive than many other countries. In Australia, which is quite similar to Canada politically, economically and demographically, we bought SIM cards for our unlocked phones in 15 minutes at the airport. The monthly costs was 30 AUS$ ($27 CDN) which gave us unlimited calling and text in Australia, 40 GB data, 50 text messages internationally, 500 phone minutes internationally. This was 1/2 our cost at home and in the case of data, over 4 times more data. We had similar experience in Portugal. We appreciate Canada particularly when we travel, however, surely some smart people in the country could figure out how to fix our telecom and airline industries so that we can at least meet global standards

Our accommodation and location is very much up to expectations. The 2 bedroom house plus den is a unique modern design, well equipped, comfortable and backs onto a trail that meanders beside a creek. In the backyard, there are a variety of fruit trees and we’ve already had figs, apricots, peaches and lemons. The gym facility at the community centre has a wide variety of equipment and we have access to it with the house rental. We have yet to play the Greg Norman designed golf course but do have a tee time booked in a few days. It appears to be a challenging links style course that is nestled amongst the 2400 houses at the Sanctuary Lake resort. Two high performance bikes came with the house and we’ve already tested them out with a 30 km ride along the coastal trail that borders on marshes and beaches. The initial weather has been seasonal ranging from 23-30 degrees C and mainly sunny skies and we’ve certainly taken advantage of it with a number of walks and bike rides etc.

We consider ourselves very fortunate and thankful to be able to enjoy so far such pleasant experiences and look forward to sharing our experiences over the next 3 months as we explore this part of Australia.

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Photos

Back of house
Our 1st sunrise at Sanctuary Lakes. Jet lag facilitates picture at 6:00 am which is about 2 hours earlier than my usual time in getting up.

Back Patio
It didn’t take Debra long to settle in.

Coastal paved bike path
Path goes all the way to Melbourne, appx 30 km and it runs behind our house.

Great room of our house
The house design has very high ceilings. At the top of the high walls are small remote control windows that, when open, allow hot air to escape making the house quite cool even during the last couple of days when temperatures hovered around 30 C.

Comments

[Daryl]

Sounds like it is all coming together. Mike Tyson said it's good to have a plan until someone hits you in the face. Enjoy.

[Sharon]

Enjoy reading
I am living the dream through you folk this winter. Thanks for the update. You certainly don’t waste any time getting out there and exploring. Good for you. Enjoy your time away. Keep those blogs coming.