Kazza's Australian Holidays

Woke up around Dentist Time for HOURS. May have gotten another hour or so sleep. Sigh.

Then had to go into battle getting photos off my phone. It kept prompting to trust the computer, and iMazing was having trouble connecting and reading files. I rebooted the computer *and* the phone. In the end I think it was actually the cable. It works for power but is seemingly intermittent for data. Fortunately Stu had an old lighting cable in his collection, so was able to use that to get my photos off.

Had some cereal and then packed up to leave. The fridge which was so cold that the milk we had brought down frozen still hadn't defrosted. And it had frozen the strawberries. So I turned it up a notch. Out the door around 10:00.

It was grey and rainy the whole day. Hurray.

We stopped around 11:00 at a rest stop north of Geelong for petrol and Hungry Cracks breakfast for the sweetie and a snack for me.

Puttered our way across the state listening to Stephen Fry's Mythos. The roads were pretty crap, full of potholes and repairs.

At Terang we stopped to eat the sandwiches we'd bought near Geelong. I had a chicken, lettuce and mayo one which was surprisingly good. I was expecting it to be either soggy or dried out (or both) but the bread was actually good. I also got out to go photograph the Presbyterian church which is a nice old building. It was COLD!!! 16.5C according to BOM and windy.

Then continued on to Warrnambool, arriving at the motel around 14:30. We checked in and dumped our stuff and Stu chilled for a bit. The motel is pretty standard Australian motel, with all the usual appoinments including a microwave.  Relatively recently renovated too.  Then I got changed into long pants and we headed out. We're not prepared for cold weather.. we only brought one pair of long pants each!!

Then we headed out.

Our first stop was Thunder Point where we had a bit of a look around the headland.

Then across to Pickering Point. Here we had a slow meandering walk along the boardwalk down to the river and the bridge and looked for various birds. The most interesting bird we saw was a signing honeyeater. Also some kelp gulls.

Back to the car then drove down to the breakwall and walked along it.

Had a look at the old aquarium domes as well.

Then drove up to Lake Pertobe and did a slow walk around the lake. We saw heaps of birds. 24 species according to Stu's ebird checklist. As well as all the usual water birds and common land birds we saw lots of New Holland honeyeaters, grey fantails, chestnut teals, a little flock of red-browed firetails, a musk duck and a pair of shelducks.  And rabbits.

It was getting pretty late at this point and we were tired and hungry so we dropped into Coles for some supplies on the way back to the motel. Had some beer while downloading gps/photos and had tv dinners (Stu had Singapore chicken and noodles, and I had red curry chicken and rice) and went to bed.