Advertisement
Published: January 2nd 2012
Edit Blog Post
January 1
st 2012 - New Year’s Day began slowly but became very, very hot well before10:00am. Originally we had planned an early start with a drive to the beach in Mornington but we were a bit sluggish first thing after the events of the night before. Our sluggishness eventually got the better of us and we abandoned our original plan to go to Mornington as time was going on and Mornington would almost certainly be busy. Instead, I prepared a picnic and we headed for Mentone – a beachside suburb not too far away from Wantirna. It took us about 30 minutes to find our way to the beach at Mentone as Graham had it in his mind that we needed to go to Mordialluc first. Anyway, we soon found a delightful spot where it was easy and convenient to park and the beach and sea both looked very inviting. We took our old chairs along with our cool-box and flask and just wallowed in the seaside atmosphere, taking the occasional dip in the sea. There were plenty of people about but the beach is so long that we had just a few immediate neighbours for company. Our picnic went down
well although drinking hot tea on a swelteringly hot day was probably not the most sensible thing to do. When we got a bit bored with just sitting in the sun we moved on to a place called Ricketts Point where there is a tearoom that sells lovely ice-creams. We’ve been there before and knew it was a popular place for lunches but we easily found a parking spot and bought some delicious boysenberry ice-creams. It looked to be a popular place for snorkelling and, although we weren’t tempted to have a go this time, we could easily return after our Tasmania trip as it’s not far from where the caravan is parked. Back at the caravan the temperature was nudging 40 degrees inside but there was a nice cooling breeze outside so that’s where we spent most of the late-afternoon, chatting to our next-door neighbour. As the evening went on I produced a fancy omelette, mainly to use up some foodstuffs before we depart for Tasmania on Tuesday. The rest of the evening was spent watching an Aussie film on the TV although I did a bit of blogging at the same time.
Monday morning (2
nd) promised to
and so was I!
complete with my new sun hat be very hot and, sure enough, the temperature in the caravan was already nudging 30 degrees soon after 8:00am – we were in for a bit of a torrid day. I managed to do a bit of washing before we prepared to go off to The Peninsula – taking a picnic and heading for Mornington which has become our favourite place in that area. We were much luckier with the journey this time compared with last Friday and we were soon negotiating Frankston and looking for the Nepean Highway which is about 10k from Mornington. This time we found a parking space easily which was handy to the pier, the beach, the park and the town – perfect. With temperatures now reaching late thirties we just wanted to cool down by having a dip in the sea, so that was the first thing we did. We already had our bathers on and just took towels and beach shoes to join the other holidaymakers in the very pleasant surroundings of Mornington beach. We swam a bit but mainly just wallowed in the lovely cooling waters. We stayed there for the best part of an hour and then walked back up to
the car and collected our old chairs, our books and our picnic before finding a shaded spot just 20 or so meters away from where we had parked. We seemed to be the only English speaking people there as the park became busy with picnickers of all nationalities, often in large numbers, but almost all of them cooking on their own barbecues. It was fascinating to watch, especially what we took to be a Turkish group of about 20 adults. Firstly, the ladies, in all their finery, were there on their own drinking coffee – no men folk to be seen. Then, seemingly at a given time but without any communication, the ladies disappeared and about 10 men came laden with food and began to prepare lavish amounts of meats and vegetables. They were meticulous with the preparation and it all looked very appetising. By this time, we had finished our picnic and were thinking of strolling into town. Just as we packed our things back into the car, the ladies returned and all the men disappeared!! When we returned from town about an hour later the ladies were still there but, again, there was no sign of the men.
Our stroll into town didn’t achieve much. We just did a bit of window shopping although we found a coffee shop where I had a Mango Crash (a bit like a smoothie) while Graham had a latte with a jam and cream biscuit.
Back at the car we contemplated what we might do next, a swim, a walk on the pier, another sit and read, but we were both so overwhelmed by the heat we decided to do nothing! We got back in the car and drove back to the caravan with the air-con going full blast. At least we were cool, that is until we arrived back at the caravan, the inside temperature of which was now well over 40 degrees. Graham went for a soak in the pool (too busy to swim but at least no-one was jumping about madly) while I sat outside the caravan and read a bit. On Graham’s return, we began to think through how we would approach our move tomorrow ie what to leave behind, what to take to Tassie, where are the ferry tickets? Will we eventually need the tent when we start touring around? We’ll have all day to get
ourselves ready as the ferry doesn’t depart until 7:30pm but, of course, we have to vacate our caravan pitch by 10:00am. At least the caravan will be accessible in storage during the day so we won’t have to rush away. The storage area we’re going to use is just 30 meters away from where we are so we don’t even have to move the caravan far and when we come back we are just a few more meters away so the arrangements this year are far more compatible than the rough time we were given on another caravan park at Warrandyte last year.
I cooked a bit of a mish-mash of a dinner making sure I used up perishable food but it was pretty good. It stayed uncomfortably hot in the caravan right up until we went to bed – we just hoped we’d be able to get a reasonable night’s sleep.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.19s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 25; dbt: 0.1579s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
annette
non-member comment
Celebrations celebrations celebrations
Well Jan & Graham, reading your blog and seeing the lovely photo's life seems to be for you a serious of Happy celebrationn: birthday's, christmas and New Year, and David and Mele's celebrations. Lovely to be with Daphne and the family at this time of year. As you say battling the Melbourne heat and unpredictability of storms is another thing. If you saw the size of the waves on the Coast up here, then imagine us there. The beach was closed for some time and not much swimming. However managed a few good days. Off to Noosa for a couple of days to share with Shasha and Jason, who tell me the sea is calm, warm and inviting. Best wishes for 2012 to all of you and exciting and happy times ahead. Affectionately Annette