BurbleChaz

If you look at map of Australia, you'd think that Melbourne is right on the south coast, next to the ocean. This is not entirely true. Melbourne is at the northern end of Port Philip Bay. To get to the ocean, you have to drive all the way around the bay. It doesn't look too far on a map. Things rarely do, to a European.

We really wanted to see the Southern Ocean, so we decided to bimble down to Philip Island. We planned our route in some detail. It started with 'Turn left from the car park, drive 250m to Flinders street..." and continued in that vein.

Execution of the plan was fairly straightforward and went like this "Left, straight, left, Oh poot, they've closed the bridge. We must now find an alternate route, and yes, that is 30 tons of tram approaching from behind. No pressure.". Except the word may not have been 'poot'

The Navigator did some excellent ad-hoc routing, while the Driver (me) gained us some thinking time by driving down blind alleys.

After two more diversions around road works, we escaped from the city into sprawling suburbia. We pointed the car in a generally southern direction, and drove through Dandenong and Cranbourne towards the south coast. At one point, the Navigator pointed out a pawn shop, with a sign saying 'Items bought and sold'. I mis-parsed the sentence. 'Porn? Second hand?'. There are some thoughts you wish you could unthink. I am happy to share this one with you.

Once we were clear of Cranbourne, about 40Ks from Melbourne, we were both thinking that we must be nearly there. The next sign disillusioned us. 90Ks to go. To an Aussie, this probably seems trivial and obvious. To a European who has only looked at the large-scale maps, it's a surprise to find that Melbourne is effectively 80 miles from the ocean.

It takes a certain amount of bravado to switch on the Cruise Control of a car of the general quality of our Nissan Nasty. I suspect I may have done it without warning the Non-Driving Pilot. It worked fine. Driving an automatic in clear roads with Cruise Control engaged is dangerously lazy. You start getting bored with the simple task of steering the thing, and start looking out of the windows, playing with the stereo and wondering why your navigator gets so agitated when you start to snooze. Cruise Control is now high on our list of toys for a new car.

Philip Island is separated from the mainland by a lovely bridge. Once we were across, it took us a while too ralise the scale of the place. It's about 20Km across.

The island is also a testament to the lack of imagination of the English. It has villages called Newhaven, Rhyll, Ventnor and Cowes. Cowes is on the northernmost side. The others are where you'd expect them, if you've ever seen a map of the Isle of Wight.

Philip Island is probably lovely in the summer, if you want a proper English beach holiday with fish and chips, candy floss and too much sunshine. In the winter, it's all a bit depressing.

We went to the far south west corner, where the marketing schematics indicated that there might be some wildlife. We made a huge mistake, by trusting the schematics (the sort that show how easy it is to get here, while omitting any link to reality). We parked in the abandoned vastness of the World Famous Pengion Parade Visitor Attraction Car Park. (No cameras, dogs or fun permitted). This facility manages customer interaction experiences (at $17 to $70 a go) with a colony of Australian Little Penguins. Apparently, these dudes spend the day fishing in the sea,, and walk back ashore at sunset every day to get some well-earned snoozing in. The staff there were helpful, friendly and not expecting people to turn up so early. They sold us a couple of bottles of water, and advised us that we could indeed walk to the end of the peninsula. They failed to mention that we could also drive there.

My built-in North Detector has not yet been calibrated for this hemisphere, so I was almost as confused as Other People while trying to locate a path described on the marketing schematic. I became more confused as we wandered along the edge of the island. The area is open clifftop moorland. Every 100m, a vehicle track has been pushed through. Many of these have road names, signed better than they would be in central Melbourne. Half the roads have 3-phase 11KV distribution. The others have 3-phase 415 transmission. There is the occasional beach hut. The place has power infrastructure for a small city. Puzzling. I suspect government funding.

Once we'd hiked 3Ks to the end of the peninsula, we found another huge car park and visitor centre. This one was undergoing major rebuilding. We dropped $2 in a telescope, to see if we could see some seals on one of the offlying islands. We could. Then the $2 ran out. $2 for a minute (maybe 40 seconds) of telescope time is beyond mean. We were not impressed.

We strolled round the boardwalk at the end of the island, through a breeding colony of seagulls. There were thousands of them. Two weeks ago, we were watching a gull chick fledge in Bristol. Today, six months the other side of the planet, we were watching Hot Seagull Action, and many birds sitting in eggs. The boardwalk goes over the breeding grounds, and you are within a couple of metres of mating and nesting birds.

The Excellent Navigator drove the car part of the way back. She agrees that Cruise Control is spiffy, but it's still lipstick on a pig when applied to a Nissan Nasty.

In other news, Team Hobbyhorse won the regatta. Huge result for the whole team. Well done Hobbyhorse!