Melbourne with Bill and Marilyn

CGB's premises

We’re being looked after by our perfect hosts, Bill and Marilyn Lingard at their house in Patterson Lakes, Melbourne for the last few day, but had rather mixed weather, some sunshine, some rain showers (some quite heavy), a blustery wind and relatively cold. On the plus side, the photos will be a lot better after Bill gave me an old camera of his that is far better than the phone camera, so thank you Bill, it’s great to have a proper camera again!

Michael at his desk

On Tuesday we had a tour of their company, CGB Precision Products PTY Ltd and met Michael, who is Bill and Marilyn’s son, working as Business Development Manager and Nicole, their National Accounts Manager. We didn’t meet the other member of staff, Barry, as he’s on a long holiday in the UK! It was great to go there again and see that things are still going well and the ‘Merobel’ product they purchase from my old company Andantex is still going strong and it was good to chat to them all about ‘business’, having been away from it for 16 months now and only had to think about campsites and ‘where we are going to go today’.

Marilyn

Nicole

Reception with some 'Merobel' displays!

And 'the boss himself', Bill

Quarantine Station

Marilyn went in to pay some suppliers and do some work while we had a look round and then Marilyn took us out for the day, leaving Bill hard at work, to look at a place called Sorrento. We’d been to Sorrento in Southern Italy for our honeymoon 10 years ago, so it was interesting to see the Australian equivalent, which turned out to be a pleasant seaside town, on a finger of land jutting out to almost separate Port Philip Bay from the Bass Strait. Port Philip Bay is a huge inlet of sea, the top of which is where

Sorrento 'Back Beach'

Melbourne CBD is situated, the bottom being almost closed between the Mornington Peninsular, containing Sorrento and Port Lonsdale on the other side, with a narrow 2.5km sea opening called ‘The Heads’.

On the way we went to Quarantine Station, which was used as a quarantine area up until 1980, after the sailing ship Triconderoga arrived there in 1852 with 48 crew and 795 immigrants from the UK with typhus fever on board, 100 having died and 400 seriously ill (it was flying a yellow flag, which apparently means ‘serious disease on board’). The final death toll was 168 passengers and 2 crew dead, they were buried on shore but sea erosion over the years caused the graves to collapse and storms uncovered the remains! In 1952 the staff moved all that was identifiable to another cemetery nearby – a bit of a grisly story!

Shavans Indian Restaurant

Anyway, on Tuesday night the four of us went to ‘Shavans’, an Indian restaurant nearby, Jackie satisfied her Biryani urge and we supplemented it with a chicken vindaloo and a lamb saag. Australian vindaloo’s are nowhere near the strength of British vindaloos and I told them so, but it was excellent and full of flavour and we thoroughly enjoyed it. As good as Diwan’s, our favourite Birmingham Balti restaurant? Not quite, but its close! Note to Australians visiting Birmingham: beware of Birmingham vindaloos!

Melbourne from Dandenong summit

Yesterday (Wednesday) we took ourselves off to the Dandenong mountains, about an hours drive north east, heading for a town called Olinda, which Bill and Marilyn had recommended. The highest peak is 633m and gives impressive views back to Melbourne, Port Philip Bay and surrounding countryside, but as we found out, its exposed position makes it quite windy and, when we were there, very cold. As Marilyn says: it was a ‘lazy wind’, meaning it goes right through you rather than round you! The landscape round there is a patchwork of exotic and large native trees and apparently is give the most accessible bushwalking from Melbourne, but not on the

Puffing Billy!

day we went, it was cold with regular heavy downpours, so we viewed it all from the car, getting out for only very short walks (hardy mountaineers?).

On the way we stopped at a town called Belgrave to see ‘Puffing Billy’ a vintage steam train (actually they have about 3, plus one diesel engine, all beautifully restored) pulling carriage loads of, mainly Japanese, tourists, sitting in windowless carriages armed with their cameras (oh dear, it started raining just after the train pulled away!), so we went down onto the platform, chatted with the engine drivers and waved as the seemingly endless

Don't forget to wave

carriages pulled out of the station (they had to put two engines on to pull all the carriages).

This picture is for Tim Holden

It starts off OK

A bit further up the mountain we had to stop at the entrance to the National Park as there was a cockatoo feeding area (or Bob feeding area as we call them after Robin and Murray’s cockatoo called Bob in New Zealand). The $4 for bird feed was well worth it as we were inundated with Bob’s and red and blue coloured parrot type birds (no doubt someone will tell us what they were). Bobs are actually quite big and heavy when they are standing on your head, shoulders and on the feeding tray you are holding. 

But deteriorates fairly rapidly!

They also fight between themselves, hang on to your clothing and handy bits of your body with their beaks to move around shoulders and arms, and in their frenzy to eat the seed before their mate snatches it all, occasionally chew fingers and thumbs! Those beaks are quite strong and we both have tell-tale Bob beak marks of blood blisters and small puncture marks on our hands. Only when they had had enough could the smaller red and blue birds come in for their share, but the whole thing was great fun and well worth the stop even though it was raining at the time.

That'll be my thumb then!

But they are pretty cute!

The BBQ King!

Last night was BBQ night at Bill’s and Michael and his wife Dannie came round along with their youngest son Jet, who is 7. The elder two girls had other things on, so it was the 7 of us. Bill did the cooking on the biggest BBQ I have seen that he pulled in under the cover on his patio, pulled down the side covers and turned on his infra-red heaters (yes, it was cold out there!). I had the opportunity to talk ‘business’ with Bill and Michael in amongst the general chat and the whole evening was great.

Today (Thursday) we leave here, go to a hotel near the airport, return our car to the hire company and get ready to leave Australia early tomorrow morning. At least our luggage will

Jackie, Dani, Jet, Michael, Marilyn and Bill (take a look at Jackies haircut!)

be lighter, we sent home 20kg of it by sea-freight (all the climbing gear, our walking boots and some winter clothing) for the huge cost of $235, but at least it will make our SE Asia trip a little easier.

Couple of things to add for yesterday, B made a very successful lemon meringue pie and I had a well needed haircut, I feel much lighter and much more ‘me’, you know it’s bad when even your husband comments you need a haircut!

Having taken a while to warm to Australia, I shall now be sad to leave, we’ve met some lovely people and had a really good time. I’m sure the next step will be fine, but it will be different, living in hotels and restaurants with very different languages being spoken and written.

Melbourne from Simon's to Bill and Marilyn's

Here's one of Simon's  pictures - us in the lift

We said farewell to Simon, thanking him for his splendid hospitality and went off to look briefly round Melbourne, which left a much better impression on us than Sydney. Although it is winter here it’s not too bad, yes we have to wrap up a little more as it’s only around 10 to 15⁰C, but it has been quite sunny with largely blue skies, so no complaints.

Melbourne is a vibrant and friendly city with a lot going on. Our Sunday amble allowed us to see it at its best, reasonably warm and sunny, bands playing, street entertainers and a huge range of restaurants to suit all pockets. It’s a well connected city of trams, buses and trains, so we got the No.75 tram from Simon’s to Federation Square and walked from there, having had a lazy start to the day, getting up around 10:00am and heading off around 11:00am after hearing of Simon’s night out that finished around 1:00am.

The converted church containing Simon's house

We barely scratched the surface of the city as we didn’t want to be too late getting to Bill and Marilyn Lingard’s, so we walked along the river on the Southbank and through the Crown Casino, which is an amazing place to see. We haven’t been to Las Vegas and I’m sure that’s much bigger and grander, but it was still good to see the pokie machines (one arm bandit machines to me), roulette and card tables all running and crowded with people at lunchtime on a Sunday! Jackie was tempted to have a go on the $2.50 per go roulette wheel, but decided against it and just watched. I would have had a go with her if I could have remembered Tim Holden’s lucky number (the one he wanted to

Simon and Jackie in the open plan kitchen

Our bedroom with stained glass window and exposed beams

put our winnings on at Steve Jonas’ stag night, got over-ruled by someone else, but his number came up so we would have won a lot of money, but didn’t). Next to us was an Irish guy who’d had a few beers and a handful of chips. He was saying to us that he wanted to put the lot on one number and was saying he fancied red 14, as he said it and before he’d managed to put his chips down the ball fell into….red 14. He reckoned he would have won about $3,000. We apologised for distracting him, but he said ‘no worries’ and proceeded to put it all on another – and lost the lot! We made our excuses and left!

Federation Square, Melbourne

Jackie in front of the tallest building

Another little walk, some lunch, back on the tram to Simon’s to collect the car and then off to Bill and Marilyn’s. I know them from my days at Andantex, they own a smallish company in Melbourne called CGB and they are a distributor of Andantex for our Merobel tension control systems and have been for many years. I came over to Australia in 2009 to help them out at an exhibition in Melbourne and they have been over to the UK to visit Andantex, so we know then quite well. Even though I’ve retired from Andantex now we’ve kept in touch and they generously offered us their spare room at their house, so here we are. Marilyn cooked a splendid roast lamb dinner

Freerunners in Melbourne. The one in the red top is in mid air, jumping from the wall to the bench

last night and today it’s our turn while Bill works and Marilyn visits her father and his ill wife, so we’ll meet up again tonight. We’re here until Thursday morning before heading off to the airport for our SE Asia adventure, so more later…

Cairns to Melbourne

The Great Barrier Reef from the air

After giving away all our extra bits that we bought for the van, toaster, gas cooker, carving knife, cheese grater, caffetiere, wine glasses and all our left over food (including custard!) to the people in the caravan next door to us, we delivered the van back to Travellers Autobarn, still with the carpet that Paul had fitted and the extra internal lights we fitted. Not sure they were particularly impressed, but we felt we’d taken the van back in a better condition than we’d received it!

Fabulous views!

The internal flight from Cairns to Melbourne was a little longer than we thought, 3.5 hours, covering over 3000km, but it had the advantage of giving us a birds eye view of the Great Barrier Reef, spread beneath us in the clear blue ocean under a clear blue sky, which was quite amazing. From a temperature of mid to high twenties we went into mid single figures with a fairly cool stiff breeze and the bustle of Melbourne, got collected by an

The Whitsunday Islands

exuberant expat Scot in his 70’s who left the Clyde 40 years ago when he said ‘Margaret Thatcher closed his shipyard’ (didn’t tell him I’m just reading her book ‘The Downing Street Years’), got our little Hyundai car and drove through Melbourne Friday early evening traffic to arrive at Simon Price’s house in Richmond, very near the CBD of Melbourne and right in amongst restaurants and great night life. Simon’s a great character, very much like his dad Ash, who we know so well from Solihull Mountaineering Club, who has been out here since 1997 and has carved a great career in IT working as a consultant to large companies to construct and integrate massive computer software systems.

Hiring the snow chains

As well as a house in Tasmania he lives in an old church that has been expertly converted into four houses that are each huge, absolutely amazing in design and with every ‘mod-con’ you could want. He showed us to our bedroom with en-suite which has original exposed beams, a stained glass window and a balcony looking down over the large kitchen with its island units in the centre. What a change from our little van, we felt like we had just entered the Ritz!

After a short walk into town for a meal in one of the many local restaurants, we were relatively early to bed to be up very early

Simon and Jackie on the slopes

yesterday (05:30) for a three hour (360km) drive to Mount Buller ski resort, equipped with Simon’s spare skiing clothing (he’s a bit bigger than me so the jacket ‘hung’ on me, but it was warm). We stopped at Mansfield for breakfast and to hire snow chains (its obligatory to carry then) and then on into the National Park and on up through eucalyptus forest, into the snow to the very efficient ski resort. Parking the car, getting a free ski bus, hiring ski gear and getting the lift pass were all an example of efficiency and minimum wastage of time and we were ready to get on our first lift at 10:50 (but less $118 ski and boot hire and $115 each for the day ski pass!).

A brief lunch stop - 10 minutes max!

The weather was perfect, clear blue skies, there had been a fresh dump of snow in the week which meant that 20 of the 22 lifts were open and the crowds weren’t too bad either, meaning very few queue’s at the lifts. In short, perfect! Mount Buller is a relatively small resort, ideal for a day or possibly a weekend, with mainly easier runs and only a few harder blacks and little off-piste, but for our time there, coupled with Simon acting as our guide to all the best runs, we couldn’t have had it better.

It did, however, feel slightly disconcerting having been transported from the tropical north with its rainforests, coral reefs, hot sun and

Eucalyptus trees in snow, that doesn't seem normal!

wearing shorts and tee shirts, to winter skiing - in a day! We have only skied in Europe before, so it was difficult getting our heads round the fact that we are still in Australia, so we were both feeling excited but very disconcerted at the same time. Eucalyptus trees poking out through snow, all signs in English rather than French or German and Aussie lift attendants made it a surreal, but great experience. There were some very good runs, fast and quite steep and some good un-pisted (or should we say un-groomed here!) black’s with moguls, but the snow was good, Simon is a good fast skier and it was just great to get the skis on and blast down the slopes trying to keep up with him –

Jackie on a mogul black run

what a fantastic day, we LOVE skiing! It’s also another tick in the bucket list, skiing in August in the Southern Hemisphere, something I’ve always wanted to do.

Our evening was nothing much, Simon had quickly showered and gone out to meet some of his friends in town (well, he’s young enough to have the energy to do that), we got a Pizza and some beers and came back to Simon’s to watch a film on his massive TV, during which I fell asleep. We gave up at 11:00pm and went to bed, Simon still out.

Australia!

I’m typing this on Sunday morning sitting in bed still recovering, maybe its time to get up and see what the day brings…