Morning dawned on our last night in the caravan. It was not
too cold, and the sun was about somewhere. We felt we did not have to rush off,
as we only had a modest distance to cover, but we did not want to start too
late. We packed up and left, aiming to have a cup of coffee in Anglesea.
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| Oops! No indicator lights on the caravan. Only happened twice on the trip. |
We
soon found out that this was not going to be a ride in the park. The road
between Apollo Bay and Anglesea (which we have driven before) sort of hugs the
cliff, is none too wide despite being one of Victoria’s main tourism routes,
and has 2543 bends in it. (We didn’t really count the bends, but this
was our unanimous estimate when we were sitting in Anglesea having a coffee.)
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| This is where we came from... |
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| ...and this is where we were going! |
We survived this road, however, had that coffee in Anglesea,
and then went on to Geelong to find a place to have lunch. The idea was not to
arrive too early in Port Melbourne because we knew the parking there is pretty
tight, so having a leisurely lunch in Geelong seemed to be a good idea. So,
fighting Serena on the TomTom, who wanted us on the freeway after Torquay, we
tootled into Geelong, found a parking spot overlooking the foreshore and the
bay and had our lunch.
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| Windy Geelong |
There was a stiff wind blowing, which had not been in our
favour and was now coming at us straight off the bay. As we sat in the caravan
, the wind freshened considerably, until the caravan was rocking with the
gusts. Joke did not like the implications of this deteriorating weather for our
trip tonight.
We drove on, joining the Melbourne road and tanking our last
petrol on the mainland. As we drove east, the wind swung around behind us,
straight from the darkest sky we had seen for a long time. We thought at first
that outrunning the inevitable rain was going to be a doddle, but we were
surprised at how fast the storm front, for that is what it was, was approaching
us. The wind was incredibly strong and becoming very gusty, so, remembering
some stories about caravans in distress on the Westgate Bridge in windy
conditions, we decided to take the Ballarat Road into town.
At the Ring Road we turned north, giving the storm more time
to catch up. We took the wrong exit, but recouped with a road leading east
which was good for quite a few kms, and which dumped us on to the Ballarat Road
anyway. About the time we were nearly north of the CBD, the storm finally
caught up and we were awash in very heavy rain along Racecourse Road and
through Royal Park. We had to do a stretch of road uphill, merging from 2 lanes
into 1, and the stop-starting made the clutch sort of mushy. Fortunately we got
through all that and drove south down Royal Parade, through the edge of central
Melbourne, across the river and into City Road towards Port Melbourne.
We pulled up in sight of the ferry bathed in sunlight after
the storm.
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| Well.... the sunlight came and went. But it was definitely the Spirit of Tasmania, and we had a ticket for it! |
Now to wait for boarding time, get our stuff in order for the ferry
and let the stress of the very difficult finale of our trip bleed away. Soon
enough we could line up for boarding, only to sit and wait again for at least
another half an hour. Then it was our turn to board, and with Joke urging me to
wait at the bottom of the ramp until the van ahead was at the top, we finally
got on to the ferry.
We got ourselves settled in the cabin, went out to have a
celebratory meal and settled down in the lounge for a bit of a read and relax.
But it had been a full day and soon we decided to retire to the cabin to have
a smuggled-up port and go to sleep.
We were a little surprised at how calmly we took
the whole going-home thing. I think it was a measure of how much we had enjoyed
every aspect of this trip, and how we were now ready to go home again.
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