Monday 28th February
Well it is Tuesday on the plane but…..
Today (yesterday) we packed up and set off down the road towards Melbourne. At first we were on local roads that were straight and bleached from the summer sun. They were as empty today as they had been over the weekend. We then picked up a highway. It had more traffic on it including trucks.
When we arrived in Arrat we saw that they had a tourist information office in the library. Like the UK you can have free internet time at libraries. We had a chat with Jenny who works there and away we went. We went onto wotif.com to look for a place to stay this evening. We ended up with a place at Werribee Mansion for half price. We were able to print out the booking forms there and then. I then checked up on a few emails. Jenny who works there is hoping to come to the UK to see relatives so we may see her again when she comes over. We gave her our email address so she can get in touch.
From there we went to Ballarat. We stopped for refreshments. I had a coffee and Jenny had a spider - well that is what it is called. It is an ice cream soda. Jenny's was raspberry flavoured. I wasn't that sure about the pink colour but you have to try these things at least once.
We had agreed to leave various things acquired on the holiday at Barney and Ingrid's house. Fortunately they had Barney's workmate house sitting. We phoned him from Ballarat. He was in and if we drove straight there we should see him before he had to go out. We got out the large Melbourne street directory and worked out the best way there. Jenny's map reading skills were on their usual good form and we went straight there.
After a quick snack we were back on the road again heading south to Werribee. It is an old building built in the 1800's by 2 Scottish brothers. It was later extended when it was turned into a Catholic seminary. In the 1970s it was bought by the state of Victoria. They have now sold part of it to a hotel chain. They have been allowed to add a block with more hotel rooms in it. The original house built by the two brothers is very much like a UK National Trust house where you can walk round and see how the house worked when it was a building lived in by a family and their staff in the late 1800's.
The hotel had a strange feel to it. It was all rather zen with twig 'flower' arrangements. The rooms tended to be black wood, glass and chrome. Not Victorian at all. As we did not fancy what the restaurant had to offer, we slipped off into the town to have a pizza. The owners were into their Italian sport, with pictures of Michael Schumacker and his Ferrari all over the place.
We thought that we should at least spend a bit of time in the bar. As we were the only ones in there we had a nice chat with the bartender. We also looked in and saw the library. It was one room that had more of an older feel to it. There were papers to read and deep sofas to sit in. It used to be a smoking room as well, but smoking is not allowed in public buildings anymore.
I went up to the room and eventually got the digitally controlled air conditioning to a setting that seemed about right. This was easier said than done as there was quite a time lag between changing the setting and the change taking effect.
