Saturday 26th February
After a breakfast of cold pizza, we head off for the end of the Great Ocean Road by leaving Warrnambool and heading for Port Fairy. We only made a brief stop. Again there must be nice parts of Port Fairy but we seemed to miss them.
We set off heading for the Grampian Hills. We were leaving the coast behind us. After a week at the ocean we are going to see the countryside. Near to the coast there has been quite a lot of dairy cattle which makes the farming look very much like England. As we head inland the farming turns to grain with big open fields. The roads change too. As the road is not following the coast there are sections of road that are long and straight.
The mobile phone reception is a little more intermittent but we do arrange a place to stay in Halls Gap. We stopped in Bathurst and had a hot chocolate. The coffee shop was also an antique shop and there were several things that I recognised from my childhood such as the old Singer sewing machine. It was more of a piece of furniture as it was operated by a foot treadle.
We pulled into a parking spot for a picnic. There was only us, the flies and the ant hills. Whilst we were there we wrote a few postcards. During that time only 6 cars went past. Some of the roads are quite deserted. It is not a place for the car to break down. It still took a further couple of hours to reach Halls Gap.
There are plenty of restaurants here, which is good. We have a look at a few menus before heading for the motel where we are staying. We have second bedroom so we do not have to sleep with the luggage which is a blessing. We can spread out a bit and see what is what. We quickly decide to stay for a second night. When we go to the reception, the owner at first thinks we have come to complain about something. She gives a big smile when we say that the room is great and ask if we can stay for a second night. Tomorrow is Sunday so we decide to have a bit of a day of rest and not travel as far. We will also be able to explore things locally a bit more.
We decided on the restaurant for the evening. When we booked, we also booked a cocktail to start with too. It was a lovely evening with good food and some good jazz to listen to. We walked home in the dusk, stopping off to look at the kangaroos that had come out to browse on the grass in a field at the side of the restaurant. We got back to the motel and opened a bottle of wine and thought about what we would like to do in the next couple of days.
