I discovered the final of the Bells Beach surfing competition was going to be held on [date missing], which was surprising because it’s usually held over Easter and this was two weeks later. As a keen geriatric surfer this was an opportunity not to be missed as I regard this as the premier event on the Australian tour and the forecast was looking good! Max and I caught the first ferry from Sorrento to Queenscliff and then it was about an hour’s drive to Bells. I arrived just in time to see the semi-finals of both the men’s and women’s and even though the surf wasn’t great, it had some size but the wind had come onshore, the surfing was great. I think surfing is like all sports, the pros make it look easy and can do amazing things in even average conditions. It was good to see Isabella Nichols win the women’s, I’d been impressed how friendly and accommodating she was to all the kids who rushed to meet her after she won her semi, and in the men’s event it was a contrast of the style and grace of Kanoa Igarashi from Japan vs. the power and aggression of Aussie Jack Robinson, with Aussies winning both events for the first time in WSL history!

After the contest finished I toyed with the idea of going to the Torquay pub for the legendary after party but figured I wouldn’t know anyone and I’d probably be the oldest there by 20 or 30 years, so I headed to Aireys Inlet to visit the Split Point lighthouse in the morning.

One of the benefits of sleeping in Max is that I can usually park where I like and invariably wake up early, so I managed to get my photography and drone work done before the lighthouse opened and be on the first tour, finishing by 9.30am!

After an excellent breakfast in the old stables and tour of the lighthouse at Split Point I decided not to continue west along the Great Ocean Road but to head back east and visit the lighthouses at Point Lonsdale and the twin lighthouses at Queenscliff.

On the way I stopped by the Australian Surfing Museum in Torquay and it was a bit of a reality check to note that a number of the guys who were my idols back in the 70’s are now considered museum exhibits! The highlights for me were seeing Simon Anderson’s original “Thruster” that he won the famous “Big Bells” in 1981, and all manner of shapes and sizes of surfboards over the years. I also visited the Rip Curl flagship store which is as much an art gallery as a store.

I overnighted at Point Lonsdale hoping to get some good early morning shots and then headed to nearby Queenscliff to visit the curiously named “twins”, the fact one is white and the other the only black lighthouse in Australia would seem to warrant a paternity test?

While at Queenscliff it occurred to me that it was the 29th of April and I wasn’t booked on the Spirit of Tasmania until the 7th of May, which I’d originally booked as it was a rare daylight sailing and I figured if I was going to cross Bass Strait twice I’d actually like to see it at least once and all the return sailings are overnight. Ironically just as I was checking if there were any earlier daylight sailings I noticed the Spirit sailing past me, on what turned out to be the only other daylight sailing before the 7th.

What to do???

I had 8 days to fill and no plan! I decided to head to Geelong to consider my options and set up camp on Cunningham Wharf on the very attractive Geelong foreshore. I decided to overnight there and amused some of the local office workers who were recovering their cars from the parking station on the wharf with my dinner preparations of fish fingers, strangely no one asked if they could share a few?

The next morning I entertained myself with a walk around the foreshore and botanic gardens ending up in a very nice coffee shop where they were happy to replace the coffee I managed to spill with one on the house and a lady sitting near me offered me one of her two slices of raisin toast, which resulted in a conversation during which she mentioned she was from a property outside Bendigo but used to regularly drive to Point Lonsdale for a swim, a distance of some 120km. I’m not sure why but this gave me an idea, because virtually all of my trip so far had been along the coast, for obvious reasons, I decided to head for the hills, the Dandenongs to be precise. For those who don’t know they are on the northern outskirts of Melbourne and as far as I can remember I’d never been there before.

After navigating horrendous peak hour traffic (at 3.00pm) through Melbourne I was amazed to find myself in a veritable garden of eden, and surprisingly high and much cooler. Thanks to the Melbourne gridlock it was late in the day and starting to get dark and I hadn’t done my usual reconnaissance patrol to identify any suitable overnight camp site, and after driving around in the dark finally settled on the car park of the Mt. Dandenong pub resisting the urge to go in and pay my dues.

After an excellent sleep in the cool mountain air I enquired at the local coffee shop if there was a lookout they could recommend with a view over the ranges, they suggested the Hamer Arboretum on the outskirts of Olinda, about 5 km down the road. I headed there and was immediately struck by the outlook and overwhelming sense of peace.

Today was the 1st of May, May Day, and I decided to spend the day there in quiet contemplation, putting into practice one of my objectives of this stage of my trip, to slow down and stop rushing from place to place. This decision was made easy by the fact that an old mate, Howard, who had an olive grove 20km down the road at Yellingbo had an appointment in Melbourne on Thursday but was around on Friday. That sealed the deal, and it turned out to be a very special day, staying in the same place the whole day, from sunrise to sunset, soaking in the view, lost in thoughts and managing to string a few words together on a subject that I’d previously found very difficult to articulate.

Next morning I headed down the mountain through Sassafras and on toward Yellingbo surprised at how quickly the landscape changed from the lush greens of the mountains to the earthy browns of Australian farmlands at the end of a long dry summer.

I hadn’t seen Howard for probably 20 years and he looked and sounded exactly the same and was obviously enjoying life, and seemed in his element on the land.

Like me Howard has had an interesting and diverse career and we first met in the late 80’s when we both became the accidental owners of a Fijian resort that our parents had invested in and which, like most time-share arrangements of the day had gone sour.

Howard and I stepped in as the white knights to protect our parents’ interests and ended up buying the resort. It came with all sorts of unusual challenges including several coups! However we managed to work through it and have remained close but distant friends ever since and know that on the rare occasions we do manage to meet it’s always as interesting and much fun as it was last time. It’s always great to see Howard and each time he, like me, seems to be doing something different, understandably he gave up practicing law decades ago and apart from the Fijian adventure he’s been into parking stations, property development, charter yachts and is now, and as I discovered has been for the past 25 years, growing olives and making the World’s best olive oil, Yellingbo Gold.

I ended up spending most of the day with Howard and when I left around 3pm I decided to head back down to Flinders and revisit Cape Schanck for a sunrise and lighthouse tour on Saturday morning.

Saturday was election day and as it transpired my mate Drew happened to be staying at Portsea by himself which seemed like too dangerous an opportunity to ignore, especially on election night. After meeting a few of his mates at the Portsea surf club for a “sundowner” and another quick spin in the Aston the night turned out to be a bit like Don’s Party in reverse. It was obvious Labour had won early in the night but as the magnitude of their victory materialised throughout the night the only respite was to keep opening bottles of Torbreck shiraz. As a result Sunday was pretty much a write off for me, and I suspect the same fate awaits our nation for the next 3 years, probably 6!

After a very late start to the day I headed to Melbourne to catch up with my cousin Richard. Arriving around 5 we headed to a local wine bar for an early dinner where we were joined by Richard’s friend Chris. Remarkably a steak and glass of red seemed to be the best cure for the previous night’s excesses and after an early night I was brand new by Monday morning, and the day was about to get a whole lot better!

Compounding the disastrous election on Saturday the internal lock on the sliding door of Max stopped working. This had happened once before while I was in Sydney and I had to book it in with my mechanic and it eventually cost about $500 to get it fixed, but it was now apparent this was a temporary fix. This was a major inconvenience because it meant that to exit the living quarters in Max required climbing into the driver’s seat and then opening the sliding door from the outside. I honestly thought I was going to have to live with this annoyance until I got back to Sydney as the chances of finding someone who could fix it at short notice were highly unlikely, but I asked Chris if he knew of anyone in the local area who might be able to help. He suggested I call Steve from MG Auto Electrics. Not fancying my chances but needing a coffee Richard and I headed down to High St. Thornbury in Max and dropped into Steve’s. I explained the situation and that I was travelling and he kindly agreed to have a look at it there and then; to leave it with him and he’d give me a call. Richard and I headed off for coffee and I couldn’t believe it when Steve called about half an hour later to say it was fixed! I could have kissed him but don’t think he would have appreciated that, so I just paid him the $70 he charged me and thanked him profusely!

Suddenly my day was looking much better as I’d organised to return a hat and sunglasses to Vesna, a friend of Marianne’s who had left them at our place back in January when they visited when we met her in Sydney. Vesna had kindly invited me to lunch which I’d tentatively cancelled thinking I’d be without transport for at least a day, but now that I was mobile it was back on. I met Vesna at the address she’d given me which turned out to be Cranlana, the Myer family’s home in the middle of Toorak which she manages on behalf of the family in addition to their social calendars, this magnificent mansion and grounds are preserved as they were when last occupied over 60 years ago and it was a rare treat to have a glimpse into a bygone age.

Following lunch I decided to visit the Port Melbourne leading lights and the Williamstown Timeball Tower which wasn’t a lighthouse but was equally important to maritime navigation back in the days of sextants and clocks because ships would set their chronometers by the dropping of the ball at the top of the tower at exactly midday each day. This was common practice in all major port cities.

My plan was to head to Geelong and spend Tuesday there before having dinner with the family of one of my daughter’s best school friends who relocated there from Sydney about 6 years ago. But on arriving in Geelong in late afternoon on what was a glorious day I decided to push on and visit the famous Cape Otway lighthouse about 3 hours along the Great Ocean Road. I arrived in Lorne in fading light and had to make a decision, do I keep driving along one of the most scenic roads in the World in the dark or do I stay the night in Lorne and do it in the morning. It was an easy choice, and I got to witness a magnificent sunrise at Lorne and had the infinite joy of driving this incredible road in the early morning of a perfect day virtually by myself. Without doubt this was one of the most enjoyable driving experiences I’ve ever had, I had the music playing and stopped about every 5 minutes to take a photo of views that seemed to get better with every turn!

I arrived at Cape Otway around 9.00am and realised I’d made doubly the right choice by staying in Lorne because the lighthouse is inaccessible until 9.30am and I wouldn’t have been able to get the sunrise shots I was hoping for if I’d arrived the night before! It’s a very interesting lighthouse for a number of reasons which I’ll discuss in my “Lighthouse Story” on Cape Otway and I ended up spending over 2 hours there then headed back along the this amazing road that I don’t think you’d ever get tired of travelling.

Despite the fact the weather had closed in it was exhilarating to be able to do this magic drive twice in one day and I enjoyed every minute of it, taking my time to visit various points of interest on the return journey and arriving back in Geelong in time for an early dinner at Sally and Jono’s beautiful 100 year old timber classic — they just don’t build homes with the style, space and attention to detail these old girls have anymore. Their eldest daughter Charlotte (Lucy’s friend) is at Melbourne Uni and I can understand why the family are enjoying life in Geelong as much as they are, they have a holiday home at Lorne and are all mad keen Cats supporters, what more could you want? After a delicious meal and a great catch-up Max and I headed to the dock to await my ship to Tasmania which was boarding at 6.30 the next morning.

So what started out as me wondering how I was going to fill the following week turned into one of the best weeks of the tour so far. I’m so glad I didn’t take the earlier boat!

p.s. For those of you observant enough to have noticed I haven’t filed any “Lighthouse Stories” on the lighthouses I’ve visited west of Port Phillip Bay it’s because I want to do them in clockwise order, as opposed to chronological order. So a lap around Tassie is next, followed by west coast of Victoria and beyond (but you have had a preview)!