Category: Australia 2022 – a little break from sailing

We’ve had a few cool, rainy days this week so we’ve stayed pretty close to home. We did take a Sunday drive to Geelong, a town that is south east of Ballarat and right on the water (Port Phillip Bay). We had a great drive down to Geelong and a lovely walk along the waterfront. This town has put a lot of effort into improving their waterfront area. There were lots of boats in the harbour and several sailboats out in the bay enjoying a sunny afternoon sail!

Mark and I have done a few walks around the neighbourhood. Even though the weather has been wet, it’s really nice to walk along the streets and down in the valley behind Matthew’s house. As I mentioned in my last post, many of the houses have very interesting ironwork on their porches. The houses also have front yard fences and gates – some of which are super fancy!!

This coming weekend we are heading up to a cabin owned by Margie’s sister. It’s in a town called Echuca and it’s on the border between Victoria and New South Wales. It’s about a 3 hour drive north so we’ll see a bit of the country side as we had north. This town is on the Murray River which is Australia’s longest river. The first time we visited Australia (back in 2000), we rented a motor home and drove from Queensland all the way back to Ballarat. The girls were young (7 and 5) and they got quite bored of the drive, so to keep them entertained, Mark kept telling them about the big river we would be crossing – the mighty Murray River. Well that winter Australia was having a severe drought and when we crossed the Murray River it was just a trickle in the centre of a wide riverbed. We’re expecting a much bigger river this time around because there have been flood warnings the past few days!

Matthew and Margie live in a lovely town called Ballarat, located about 1.5 hours north west of Melbourne. We’ve arrived nearing the end of winter and the weather is cool – no shorts for Mark. The town is very charming and many of the older homes have beautiful iron work details on their front porches. I just can’t get enough of this beautiful ironwork on the homes.

We spent our first real day (Saturday, Aug. 27th) checking out the local farmer’s market which happens near the lake. It was quite busy – lots of people getting out in the nicer weather (we had sun and about 15 degrees). We looked around at the botanical gardens and had a bite of lunch near the lake. It was a relaxed day – we’re still getting used to the time change – 14 hours ahead of Toronto, so we’re taking it easy.

I’ll take some photos of the houses around town soon! For now, here are some shots of our market day!

With the sailing season still several months away, Mark and I decided to take a little side trip to visit my brother and family in Australia. We’ll be staying with Margie and Matthew for 5 weeks and are excited to catch up with them and also see a few new spots in the country.

Our adventure started on Tuesday, Aug. 23 with our usual drive to Toronto. We had a great visit and lunch with Ted and then headed downtown to have dinner with Evelyn and Caroline. We spent the night at Evelyn’s. We were up early (5:30am) and Evelyn drove us to the airport at 6:30am (arriving just after 7am). I am very pleased to say that all the horror stories I’ve been reading about Pearson Airport didn’t come true for us. Evelyn was a great help as we navigated the WestJet self serve checkin kiosks and then the self serve baggage drop off!!

By 8am, Mark and I were through security and American Customs and Immigration and were seated at the gate for our 10:35am flight. Time for coffee and a bit of breakfast.

Our WestJet flight boarded on time and we departed about 15 minutes late (that seems pretty standard to me). It was a full flight to Los Angeles but didn’t feel crowded at all. This was our first WestJet flight and it was quite nice.

We made great time flying across the USA and when we arrived at LAX at 12:45pm (pacific time), our gate was still occupied by another plane. We sat on the tarmac for about 15 minutes before the plane proceeded to the gate. It was a very smooth first flight and with the aid of our newly purchased AirTags, I could tell that both our checked bags made it to LAX!!

So here we sit – an 8 hour layover before our big 14 hour flight to Melbourne. The departure gate for our 9:30pm flight was empty when we arrived at 2:30pm, so we found a nice spot by the window where we could plug in our devices and charge them up. We still have about 4 hours to kill but airports are always interesting places!! Next stop – Melbourne at 6am Friday morning!!!