Port Fairy - Melbourne Cup Weekend 2012

Port Fairy, our home over the Melbourne Cup long weekend. 

As we had not had the van out since the Darwin trip in April we had been looking forward to a good opportunity to get back out on the road and with our planned three week trip at Christmas getting closer it was a good change for a dry run. For this trip we chose the Belfast Cove Holiday Park. It turned out to be a great little park that was nice and quiet. Its only let down, to us, was the size of the sites and the road through the park. The sites are tight to reverse into and there is insufficient room to park your vehicles. This means many cars are protruding onto the road, limiting through traffic. I ended up rating the park a 3 on "Badgers"

As it was a dry run we also took the Kayak. We did not end up using it on this trip but it did travel well on the car. Also on this trip was Mum and Dad (Suprise, Suprise) who were testing out their new Van on its first trip. All went well and overall we only have a small list of things we had forgotten to pack.

As we were there for a few days we had planned to do some travelling to other towns in the region. Our first stop, though, was the Port Fairy show. This just happened to be on when we arrived on Saturday so off we went. It was a typical country show with plenty of farm related animals. There was also rides for the kids and some great stalls/displays. Caityn ended up finding herself nursing a wallaby joey and a blue tongue lizard, which she enjoyed. Sara would of liked to bring home one of the sugar gliders they had as a pet too.

Caitlyn also found herself jumping around in a Giant ball, she is in the Yellow one :)

Sunday saw us drive down to Portland for a look around. A place on our bucket list of places to stay is Narrawong, and looking at the caravan park there, we will most definitely visit there soon.

We had a brief look around Portland, most of the town being out to support a running event that was on. In the evening we all decided to go for a walk out to the Griffiths Island Light house. This was a great walk and we returned to the cars just in time for the sunset.

Monday saw us head east to Warrnambool. We have been here before and spent most of the day walking the main street before heading down to the beach. The weather had turned for the weekend though so it was not as nice a day as the day before. We also drove out to the breakwater wall and the old battery installation for a bit of a look. They really knew how to build structures in the "old days". The breakwater wall has seen better days and must of really looked great in its time.

Our final night in Port Fairy was spent at the Commercial Hotel for a great meal before walking along the old docks in town. 

Fossicking in Powelltown

We managed to get away with the Goulburn Valley Gem Club on a fossicking trip this week end. The trip was well supported with about 10 car loads of people heading up into the hills north east of Powelltown, Victoria.

Powelltown Hall Carpark

Carpark / Clearing near our fossicking location

Bianca, Our Mining Supervisor for the day

The location, once an old Tin mine, was said to have many varieties of Quartz (clear, Smokey and Citrine) as well as Topaz and Tourmaline.

In our car, our being Bianca and Myself, we had Chris and John. As a team we also ended up working the same hole for the day with Margaret joining us after lunch. Working the one hole meant we were able to work over much more material in our sieves and plenty of stone was carries back up to the cars for investigation, not all of it keepers though.

Some of the dense bush we needed to get through to find the creek

Apparently its time for lunch

Some of our haul

Yep, another Leech

In the end we managed to find plenty of quartz, of various colors and quality and some good samples of black Tourmaline. I don't believe we were lucky enough to uncover any Topaz, which i a shame. Still, that just means there is some there for us to find next time. Leeches were the only issue for the day, many of them finding their way over to me for a feed.

Smoky Quartz Points

A Large Smoky Crystal i grabbed for the garden

All in all it was a great day out. Thank you to the Goulburn Valley Gem club and Margaret from the Essendon Lapidary club for a great day out. I am looking forward to the next trip to Stratford.

Updates and Port Fairy planning

Its been a long time between posts but as its winter we have not been taking the van out, rather we have been doing some great day trips out of Melbourne, on the days where the weather is mild.

With Spring here and Summer on its way we have a few outings planned to get us warmed up for the Christmas Trip.

Updates
Firstly, i have made some updates to the Fuel economy page for the Colorado, and i have updated the Colorado page with updated information on the Warranty issues we have been having, and some photos of the recent upgrades.

Trips

We have a few longer day trips planned, mostly with the Essendon Gem & Lapidary Club. The first, in late October, will be to Powelltown, were we expect to be able to fossick for Quartz and Topaz. As Powelltown is close to Melbourne we will be treating this as a day trip.

The second Fossicking trip we have planned for the last part of the year is to Stratford, which although further afield, we will also still treat as a day trip. It will be a LONG day though so we are keeping our options open :) I am not to sure what we expect to find here but there is a 4WD day planned into the hills so it should be a lot of fun.

Lastly we have booked a weekend away for Melbourne Cup weekend. For the 4 days of the long weekend we are booked into the Belfast Cove Holiday Park in Port Fairy. The park receives very good ratings on the Badgers review site and we are looking forward to getting away in the van.

Australian Travel Bloggers

I thought i might make an update detailing some of the various Blog's i have been following lately. They are all great and detail the many ways we are travelling around Australia. I find the blog's a great source of Ideas for future trips, and a way of escaping without actually heading out myself. There is no order to the pages below, and many of them have completed their Epic journeys. If you know of any other great travel blogs, feel free to leave a comment.

http://www.livinontheroad.com.au/

http://www.rednomadoz.blogspot.com.au/

http://barbanddarrylgottago.blogspot.com.au/

http://smiffy2011.wordpress.com/

http://mumfordsvswild.wordpress.com/

http://stamand4.blogspot.com.au/

http://www.touring4x4.com/blog/

http://somers1999.blogspot.com.au/

http://frostystravellingaustralia.blogspot.com.au/

http://project2014australia.blogspot.com.au/

http://woodfamilyaroundoz.blogspot.com.au/

http://aroundaustraliabycaravan.blogspot.com.au

http://cusworthcaravancapers.wordpress.com

http://gillfamilyozodyssey.blogspot.com.au

Housekeeping and Blog updates

We are now underway with the planning of the next trip. To help support the planning, i have set up an Itinerary page, as per some of the other trips we have made. It can be found here.

I also plan to update the other Itinerary pages linking to each blog post relevant to that particular trip. I should have this done over the next few days.

We are having quite a bit of fun planing this trip, especially since we now have our own 4WD. We are planing to go on a "tag along tour" whilst in Queensland, hopefully on Stradbroke Island, to learn how to drive on sand. Caitlyn is looking forward to hand feeding the Dolphins at Tin Can Bay, and of course, Sara and I cant wait to visit the Bundaberg Rum Distillery.

In Oberon we are planing to visit the Glow worms at Lithgow, the Jenolan caves and Katoomba. I cant wait to get the girls on the Scenic Railway.

As always, if you have any suggestions or comments please feel free to leave a comment here :)

Planning–Xmas 2012

Well, planning is now underway for Christmas this year. We would like to travel up to Queensland for the break and have picked Tin Can bay as our most northerly destination. We are still finalising our stops and are having some difficulties as many of the places we have chosen further south are either booked already, or are charging overly exorbitant prices for a powered caravan site.

The stops include Tin Can Bay, Surfers Paradise, Yamba and Oberon with other places in between.


View Larger Map

 If you have any great suggestions feel free to leave a comment.

Colorado updates :)

I have just added a page to the side bar showing the upgrades we are making to our tow vehicle as we make them, the page will also detail any issues we have.

Fuel economy information can be found here and is regularly updated.

Day Trip - Erskine Falls

Not a trip as such but as winter approaches we have decided to try and get out more on day/weekend trips rather than our normal weeks long trips.

Today we packed up the Colorado and headed on down to Lorne and the Erskine Falls. We picked a great day for it with the sun shining most of the day and the weather being mostly warm.

 

We headed out from Melbourne to Lorne first, via the start of the Great Ocean Road, stopping on the beach. As soon as we approached the water line, looking for shells, we started noticing common sea glass, ie beer bottles :). I mentioned to the kids to start looking for Blue sea glass to see how they might go and after some searching they found some. We also found clear, green and some ceramics. We didn't collect much in the way of quantity but we all had fun looking.

After this we made our way into Lorne and onto the road heading up into the Otways to Erskine Falls. A quick stop at the Blanket Leaf picnic area showed us where we would be returning for lunch, but first the falls.

 

I selected this destination as it was identified as being close to the carpark. I really did not waht to be walking through the hills for an hour looking for the waterfall. The falls in this case were, with the upper falls lookout being only meters from the carpark. The lower falls viewing platform, however, was quite a descent down many stairs. The stairs were well maintained and there were rails all the way to the bottom. The lookout, and the falls were magnificent and we spent quite a bit of time down here taking photos and looking around. I think we were also delaying the ascent back up the stairs :)

 

 

 

The climb back up only served to highlight how unfit we all are :(

 

After the falls we returned to the picnic grounds where we had a BBQ lunch, with Bianca manning the tongs. The park was nice and quiet, and i could see it being very popular in the summer.

 

After the falls and lunch, we returned to Lorne, where we took a walk down the main street and the foreshore, which was packed with people having the same idea, making the most of a great day.

 

Overall the kids loved the day out and we will be planning many more daytrips in the near future.