Sunday, December 11th, 2005

Today's the day that the jetlag finally caught up with me and bit me in the ass. I asked Sea the date and he told me it was the 12th. Why I believed him, I don't know; but it screwed up the better part of my morning, trying to retrace the previous week. Today was the day that we went for a drive down the peninsula and I didn't get a chance to actually check the date until we got back in the evening.

Euan made some coffee for the road and we were off. We took the highway down and on the way saw a whole bunch of motorcyclists all driving along with some of them decked out in Santa suits, elf costumes and one of them even had a full sized Christmas tree and stuffed reindeer (not stuffed in the "taxidermized" way) on the back of his bike. They even had a police escort. Now that's something you don't see everyday!

The best I could do with my crappy camera.
Unfortunately none of these guys were decked out in Xmas gear.

We eventually got off the highway and headed into beach house territory. From what I could see they were quite beautiful - but also quite hidden from view. Our first stop was a very quiet beach near Mt. Eliza The water was a bit chilly and the sand was kind of coarse (not sure why this is significant to me, but it is.) The area is very "upmarket." Driving through Mornington was nice.

Down to the beach.

Looking down the beach.

I thought these red rocks were kind of cool.

Our tour around the area focused on various properties that Euan & Gabby were thinking about buying, so there was a lot of discussion on property values. As you can imagine, these places were quite understandably dear. They were gorgeous, but a lot of them seemed empty.

We worked our way along to Arthur's Seat, which is a big mountain in the middle of much flatter land. It seemed rather conspicuous but the view was spectacular. The water along the beaches was a blue/green colour and stretched on for miles.

View from Arthur's Seat.

Slightly better view.

Goofy picture from atop Arthur's Seat with crazy hair.

Afterwards we headed down and stopped off in a town called Rye. Here we had some pies by the shore (and I had some badly needed water!) There were lots of kids playing in the water and sunbathers, but not a lot of swimming. It was at this point that I became resigned to the fact that the flies are inescapable here (as in Australia, not just this particular place.)

Then we drove to a nice little place called Portsea where we wanted to go to a pub but it was too crowded to even park. Just as well, I suppose. Popular place... Lots of scuba diving around apparently.

We drove on a bit into a different area with more cliffs. It was essentially on the middle of the point or the other side of the peninsula, so it was windier and wavier. We were told the Prime Minister, Harold Holt, had drowned while swimming here many years ago. In fact, I later found out that the anniversary of this incident was coming up in a few days. We all liked this area more; as you can see in the pictures it is quite wild and rugged.

The wild side...

We left the cliffs and drove down to a cute little property that Euan & Gabby almost bought the last time Sea visited, but chicked out. There was brush - tea tree I'm told - growing everywhere. It was kind of cool, but I could see it might not survive a brush fire.

I was told the bush with the white flowers is tea tree.
Photo taken further up the peninsula.

We stopped at Flinders for a couple of "pots" of beer, then we travelled through horse country. Looked like a nice place for trail riding. Maybe some day.. Everything on this side of the peninsula was hilly and farmed. I kind of liked it better, as does Euan & Gabby. It reminded me of the Okanagan Valley in BC.

We stopped for some groceries in a town called Balnarring, after Sea suggested making his burgers for dinner. This got us off track somewhat and we ended up doing a big circle through winery country. But it was all good because we checked out a huge winery (Red Hill Winery?) that was open to the public and the scenery was gorgeous, so who could complain?

The winery we visited. This photo doesn't quite give you an idea of just how massive it was.

This was actually the smaller end of the vineyard.

So then we headed back through some less interesting scenery and I dozed off in the car. When we got home, I had a strange sunburn on only one knee. It was strange because it wasn't even on the window side. No idea how I got it but I'm going to have to be more proactive with the sunscreen.

Everybody napped till about 6:30 (we got back later than expected because of the detour.) then Sea made his burgers and we cracked open the leftover bottle of Pink. The burgers were good but SO filling. We watched the second Bridget Jones movie (The Edge of Reason? Wasn't as good as the first - kind of silly, actually) and went off to bed.

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