Mar 14th - Melbourne to Geelong

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

No idea how long this has been running here

A mixture of shops from high end to cash converters type places

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!

Another simple bed and room

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.

We realize we need to take more pictures as we have none that show how old fashioned it looked to us.

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 felt welcomed

The carousel inside the tourist information office area

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.

Is it a boat or a pier or a house? Probably all three.

Butterfish and chips

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.

The sailor has an eye on this lady

Do you lot know the theme from Carousel?

Then we caught to mini train with 3 carriages, which saved us a lot of promenade walking.

There was a youngster onboard who loved being on “Thomas”

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.

Past the harbour

And the wheel

And a quirky fountain

Couldn’t get a close up of the pool because it was full of kids having fun. You can just make out the fountain in the middle and bigger kids swim in the sea behind

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.