To Frankston

What crap awful weather this Australia place has at the moment; cold and grey and rainy. All day. Relentless. And this is late spring, early summer, when it’s supposed to be hot with blue skies in Victoria. It’s apparently the wettest November for 20 years, and its been chucking it down for weeks according to every person in Melbourne and all points in between. So you Australians, don’t you dare bang on about British weather again. Ever.

It started to rain as we left the hostel in Anglesea this morning ( we’d stayed there as it was tipping down when we arrived too and none of us pansies fancied a night under canvas) By the time we’d gone 200 metres, it was shedding it down, and that’s how it stayed all day.

We stopped not far up the road at Bells Beach, a surf recreation reserve, and a big surfing place if you’re a surfer. Its apparently the home of Rip Curl Pro too, which happens every April. 

But there was nobody there this morning except for two old codgers who turned up in ropey cars,unloaded tatty boards, and then hobbled down to the sea. One had long hair and looked like Jesus, and was probably not far off his age, whilst the other was a bit younger and more sprightly. 

But they paddled out to the bigger waves, and good on them, they were both really strong and made light work of it. But the waves were pretty big and they couldn’t hop on much, so we left them to it.

Although it was still the Great Ocean Road, anything of interest was masked by sideways rain, so we stopped off at Torquay for coffee. And it was right next to a book shop where I got my travellers’ guide to Australian wildlife - a laminated card with pictures and a brief biog of each. The lady in the shop turned out the whole stock for me to find it. She kept apologising for the weather too, which was lucky as had it been nicer, then maybe she wouldn’t have been so helpful and found my chart for me. I can tick quite a few off the list already, but my must see top spots are a numabt, a poteroo and a rat- kangaroo. Or a rataroo or something. Looks pretty cool whatever it's called though.

After Torquay, we carried onto Queenscliff for the ferry across Philip Bay to Sorrento, which entailed riding through a place called Wallington.

As we approached the ferry ticket office, the two ladies inside got all excited, bombarded us with the usual questions - where we are going, where we have been, what the bikes are, how fast they go, and insisted on taking pictures of us for the ferry website. When we eventually got the tickets, they waved us off, shouting ‘ you’ve made our day!’.

There is a black lighthouse in Queenscliff too, the only one in Australia. Its built of blue sandstone and was meant to be painted, but nobody got round to it.

The ferry over took about 40 minutes and was quite smooth, which is just as well as there were no tie downs or bike bays. They deck blokes were very chatty too, where we were going, where we’d come from, what we’d seen etc etc.

Sorrento is a nice little place, and we stopped there for some lunch and a brief respite from the continuing rain. Then it was onwards to Frankston and a nice dry stop for the night. After a hot shower and a glass of wine of course.