This morning we said our goodbyes to Melbourne and headed to Geelong which is a seaside town and the starting point of the Great Ocean Road.
We spent the morning taking our final look and pics in town. First of all we walked to see the upside down tram sculpture, which was pretty cool, then we took the tram one last time, got off near theatre land and wandered around that area. Then we took a mixture of trams and walking back to the hotel
We both feel that Melbourne is a Jekyll and Hyde sort of city with 2 sides to it and because of that we are not fans compared to Sydney and Brisbane. To be fair, there seems to be a lot of regeneration and building work going on and because of its small size everything is all jumbled up together: the fantastic; the good; the seedy and the grotty.
Oh one more thing about Melbourne before we leave. One of the shows in its 4 main theatres was….
This character is playing an unexpected big role in this section of our holiday. More very soon.
So 1hr down the road is Geelong. What a funny and delightful place this turned out to be.
We are staying in the Admiralty Motor Inn - they are pretty similar down here - we were spoilt rotten in our first one back in Queensland!
We had about a 15min walk, thru town, to the shoreline. The town is a mixture of new stores / shopping centre and the rest looks like something out of 1955 Back to the Future set.
When you hit the shoreline you are hit with carousel music - which you hear from a distance first - and then you start seeing all these wonderful, but strange, people bollards. You are also greeted by a mini-train. Maybe we just have Mary Poppins on the brain now but it felt like we jumped thru the chalk painting in the film minus the animated penguins.
We have jumped ahead a little so going back to the order of things, we headed straight to this wonderful, yet, also strange looking restaurant for fish and chips. It was gorgeous - Pam had Flake and Mark continued working thru his unrecognisable fish menu with Butterfish - he really likes Butterfish.
After food we strolled past some more bollards - The bollards are made of wood and the original idea was they were set up along a school route to encourage the kids to go to school, then the local council loved them so much they asked the artist to create more for the seafront for the tourists and this is what you have now.
Then we caught to mini train with 3 carriages, which saved us a lot of promenade walking.
The train took us alongside the seafront and past the children’s Ferris wheel and trampolines and then up to the park where there was a marvellously large children’s paddling pool complete with fountain - we would loved to have been kids here.
Our train returned us to the tourist information office and carousel and Pam bought a few souvenirs. We ended our seaside trip with ice cream of course. What a lovely place.
On the way back to our motel we picked up food and supplies for tomorrow and slept with the sound of the carousel still in our heads.
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