MELBOURNE: Sunday 22nd April till Anzac Day 25th April 2012. Yesterday we rode further into Melbourne than we had originally planned due to worrying about all the heavy traffic. The best things we have bought for our big holiday have been GPS Genie and Senna Speakers so we can manage at times like this, and we ended up at the Melbourne Big4 Caravan Park which is in Coburg, just 9kms out of Melbourne city. Our tent site overlooked the Merri Creek and lovely bush...

Bendigo to Melbourne The plan once again was to stay off the major Freeways and Highways . It is just a matter of programming into the GPS the little towns along the way and then letting it do its thing. Trish was interested in going through Axedale where there had been her Hawkins relatives in the past. There should be a few of them in the local cemetery. I had a desire to go through the areas where the devastating Victorian fires took place in 2009. I...

Thursday, Friday 19th, 20th April 2012: Castlemaine and Maldon towns. On Thursday Dave and I rode to Castlemaine, which is an old gold mining town about 44km from Bendigo. We always head straight for the Information Centre in a town when we are sightseeing, as the people in them are always so welcoming and helpful, quickly helping us with our plans for exploring their district. The "I" Centre in Castlemaine was especially informative, and I read up about how i...

Apollo Bay to Bendigo: Monday 16 April. Dave and I left our cosy cabin and rode on more of the grand Great Ocean Road. Not many cars and only one group of young Asian men on motorcycles. Beautiful misty ocean scenery viewed from sweeping bends flanked by huge rocky cliff faces. We stopped for a coffee at Anglesea, and then rode up away from the ocean on boring flat country roads. Bacchus Marsh looked an interesting town to explore another time one day. It got ...

We had decided to break the Great Ocean Road into two parts so that we did not do a really long day and had time to stop and enjoy the views . . . ah! And what views. In our typical way we took to the back roads from Halls Gap. All was going well, very quiet roads with no other cars in sight then I heard a yelp from Trish only to look in the mirror and see a roo pass just in front of her. After that there were another couple of wallabies on the side of the...