Mar 31 and Apr 1 2018
We only had a very short time to explore an area rich in history during the gold mining boom of mid to late 1800s.
We left Grampians as the town of Hall’s Gap was starting to get busy with families on holiday for Easter weekend.
We drove to Ballarat which is a lovely town with a rich Victorian history. We know about the town because it is the setting for the murder mystery Dr. Blake series.
We had an excellent lunch at Mitchell Harris Wine Bar. An excellent Pinot Noir, actually two glasses made me very sleepy.
We explored the Art Gallery of Ballarat. I particularly enjoyed a special exhibition of travel sketches and paintings by Eugene von Gerard.
Our destination for the night was the small village of Macedon located near Mt. Macedon and on the Goldfields trail. It’s an upscale country bedroom community of Melbourne with lots of trees, rolling hills and a mix of cute middle-class homes and gated mansions.
We were delighted with our accommodations and hostess at Hollyhock B&B. The owner lives in this four bedroom arts and craft styled home. We had a private king suite with two walls of windows looking over a lush wooded yard filled with some very vocal birds.
The owner Christine was very warm and gracious. Wish we could have stayed longer. She would have put me to work fixing her IT issues.
Not much is open on Easter weekend. Luckily Ida Red, a pizzeria, was serving their delicious wood fired pizzas.
We woke up to a fiery red sunrise and gained an hour with daylight savings time change.
Today is the Australian Easter and we thought it fitting to drive 15 minutes to the top of Mt. Macedon to visit the Memorial Cross, a tribute to veterans of World War
Back to Melbourne to return the car, fly to Cairns and pick up another car. We sleep in Pt. Douglas tonight.
Sydney landing.
Bill says he’s at 80 hours of driving so far including NZ.
Washington DC to California is 47 hours he says.
This is the trip we just finished in AU.
Jetstar is a low cost airline that makes their money on baggage fees and onboard snacks. We have had several hassles with them regarding our luggage. We flew from Melbourne to Sydney, had to pickup our bags and then recheck bags for next flight to Cairns.
I had prepaid $30 per person for both flight to check a 15kg bag. That is 34 pounds.
So before checking in at Melbourne we rearranged our stuff to stay under the weight limit, shoving extra stuff in carry on bags. No problems at all. Checking bags was totally automated at kiosks, no airline staff at all.
Things were a bit different in Sydney. The lady taking bags made us weigh all of our carry-ons to make sure we didn’t have more than 14kg total. Well we were 9 kilos over! Twenty pounds too much. She suggested we pay $105 more for extra weight or throw some stuff away. So we slid off to an empty scale to regroup. Our solution was to throw some food and magazines in the trash but mostly we pulled out twenty pounds of books, shoes and coats and piled them on a vacant chair. Then we marched back to same lady to get our bags reweighed and the official red carry on tag. Then we went back, got our twenty pounds of stuff and shoved it all back in the tagged carry-ons.
What a stupid rule. They are more worried about our carryon luggage and charging $4 for a bottle of water but no one checked our IDs or passports to get on any of the domestic Australian flights.
Feeling blessed that in one day we saw the sunrise, the sunset and the full moon rising.
