19.05 & 20.05 Our Weekend of Exploring!

View from Mornington Harbour.

View over Mornington Harbour.

Views of Melbourne rising out of the waves!

On the beach with the huts.

One classy beach hut!

One way on to the housing ladder!

Pair of gulls having takeaway squid. Joanna tried to save it, but it was too late.

At the top of Arthurs Seat is, as Joanna is demonstrating, a seat! It does exactly what it says on the tin!

Wine tasting! Well, the woman serving was so encouraging, and I think it was a ploy just to move the more expensive stock!

The Tucks Ridge vineyard, with autumn colours!

Every beach has a sign like this! Note how to much detail is used on securing your umbrella!

You always see the bottom part of this sign, as it is placed all around the city. People are generally very good. We've seen some people carting sacks back after their walks, so perhaps the sign is slightly understated!

The boardwalks of Cape Schnack, with the lighthouse situated at the top. We didn't go in as Joanna described it as a possible contender for the "most boring lighthouse" in the world, plus it cost $14 each! Click on the link to see the original lighthouse!!

Just a little bit breezy on Cape Schnack.

Rye Beach just as the sun came out, before the next rain shower.

On the road in the Nissan Tiilda, she was a beaut mate!

The Spa Town of Daylesford, famous for all its local springs and historic buildings. We were greeted by a large amount of rain, mustn't complain though, we desperately need it! Especially for the waterfalls, that were dry!

On our way from the Blow Hole, we saw our first kangaroos/wallabies that crossed the road in front of us! Made the whole day worth it!!

Joanna tyring one of the three springs at Hepburn. This spring had a fairly strong taste of iron, but was strangely fizzy and quite delicious. The other two were a lot strong and not so good.

The view from Hepburn Springs Look Out Tower. You could see quite a lot of trees and the rain coming our way!

Daylesford Lake surrounded by trees going through the 'change'.

19.05 & 20.05 Our Weekend of Exploring!

This weekend we headed out of the confines of the Docklands and the city and headed out into country Victoria.

Saturday was spent exploring the Mornington Peninsula just over an hour outside Melbourne, the peninsula is at the bottom of the bay and Melbourne sits at the top of the bay. We headed out in our upgraded hire car a lovely Nissan Tiida from our usual Hyundai Getz down along the coast. We made an early start and had a poverty corner packed lunch to enjoy later! Our first stop was Mornington a lovely seaside town with a little harbour and colourful beach huts. We were dodging rain showers all day but managed to have a walk along the beach and view a few local residents!

Then down the coast and inland up to Arthur’s Seat a view point overlooking the bay a winding road which Nathan loved driving up! Again had to dodge yet more rain showers but we decided to head to the vineyards and enjoy some cellar door hospitality! We went to Tuck’s Ridge vineyard and worked our way through the tasting list, well I did but Nathan had a go on some of the wines after the tasting lady bullied him into giving it a go he even found a couple he liked! But due to Nathan’s expensive taste his favourite wine cost $50 a bottle no chance of that entering our apartment! I however made a small purchase for later!

Back on the road to experience more UK place names as we headed to Shoreham and the imaginatively titled Cape Schnack lighthouse we didn’t go in as it cost $14 each and it didn’t look that exciting! But we walked out to the point bracing ourselves against the wind it looked a lot like Devon and Cornwall with the weather to match! After this excitement we had lunch on Rye beach overlooking the Bass Strait – the stretch of water which separates Australia and Tasmania. The weather made the waves huge and picnicking took place in the car!

After lunch we headed to the main reason for going down to the Mornington Peninsula the Peninsula Hot Springs, a collection of hot thermal pools which are heated by the thermal underground activity. It was a lovely setting of 4 pools ranging from 37° to a boiling 42°, the pools all have mineral properties and are very good for you but taste like iron! It was great but quite busy with lots of hen parties having spa treatments. We came out lovely and warm and the rain had finally dried up!

Back on the road again to lovely little seaside towns Sorrento and Portsea right at the bottom of the bay – Point Nepean. Then it was time to head back to Melbourne travelling back in yet more rain! We spent the rest of the evening on Saturday deciding where to go to on Sunday! In the end we decided to have more spa water action and head to Daylesford and Hepburn Springs allegedly the spa area of Australia! We didn’t make such an early start and didn’t even make a poverty corner packed lunch – that is living on the edge!

Daylesford is also about an hour from Melbourne to the North West ish of the city, and is really green and hilly with tons of eucalyptus trees and at last we spotted Kangaroos in the wild as they bounced in from the side of the road in front of us.

In more torrential rain we got to the lovely little town of Daylesford just in time for morning tea a great ozzie tradition which I have embraced fully!

There are loads of naturally occurring springs that spring to the surface here which all have different mineral compositions and have good healing properties. There are also lots of places to have massages etc but no time for that nonsense! Headed up to Hepburn Springs 3km from Daylesford to the historic Blowhole which wasn’t blowing as there has been no rain! Still it wasn’t a total waste of time as we saw the ‘roos on the way back! We found our way to the springs and tasted the water at 3 different springs – Locarno, Sulphur and Wyuna you pumped them from the ground with an old school hand pump they all tasted of iron but were fizzy – weird!

More rain meant yet again picnicking in the car overlooking Daylesford Lake and as the weather was so bad we headed back to the city which hadn’t really had any rain – oh how they need the rain here!

Anyway that was our weekend of exploring we have found lots of places we want to go back to in the summer when the weather will be (hopefully) a LOT better!

Hope you like the pics!
Jo x