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I’ve been slack with the blog posts but that doesn’t mean we’ve been sitting around doing nothing. Far from it. It’s just that we were on holiday and I wanted to stay away from the laptop as much as I could.

Besides, I can’t remember what we did on which day.

So for now just enjoy the photos of tenpin bowling with the kids and the Great Ocean Road with Jon and Bethany. I’ll have a think and try to write some stuff down.

Bowling (click for album)

Great Ocean Road

Georgia and Lindsay came to stay on Saturday night. It was just a short stay this time, but we found time to take the boy to the beach for a swim. He’s strained the cruciate ligament in his right knee somehow (like footy players do), so we’re not supposed to walk him but we can swim him, so he’s been spoilt for the last few weeks with frisbee throwing/swimming in one of the channels near the bridge at Barwon Heads. Lucky boy.

Here are some Polaroids from that afternoon. They’re a bit dark but that’s my fault – I had the exposure setting on the camera set to dark.

Georgia throwing the frisbee.

I like Max’s face in this one. He is not amused.

Max fetching the frisbee for Lindsay.

The sun came out for this one.

A great one by Lindsay.

Max is not amused in this one either.

As usual the girls were very good. They even made their bed properly in the morning!

Fetch it Maxy

Happy boy

Had a great time fanging Dad’s MX-5 down the Gt Ocean Road to Apollo Bay this morning.

Dad picked me up from home at 6.15 and we drove the five minutes to our meet-up point opposite Bunnings Waurn Ponds on the Princes Highway, just before the Anglesea turnoff. We were a few minutes early but the 50-strong convoy soon zoomed past and I pulled out to join it. There were a few stops and starts between Waurn Ponds and Anglesea to bunch up the cars and let others join the convoy, but as soon as we cleared Anglesea the proper driving began!

On the section between Point Roadknight and Lorne we were behind an MX-5 who struggled to keep up with the cars in front (she was a bit slow, the cars in front were pretty quick), but it was still fun whipping into corners and letting the car do its thing. I haven’t driven a manual for a while, but the memories of driving my old Mini Cooper repro came flooding back and before long I was up and down the gears, accelerating into the bends and generally having a great time.

After a coffee break at Lorne (where Dad tried a weird self-heating latte that he’d bought – but it didn’t self-heat) we were off again on the section to Apollo Bay. Dad suggested we try to get into the convoy a bit earlier to avoid the slowpokes, so we moved out of the foreshore car park in about 9th or 10th spot, which was almost directly behind the MX-5s with all the racing stripes, fat exhausts and rollcages.

It was clear after about 2km that the gold car in front of us couldn’t keep up with the racers (or didn’t want to), but he was going plenty quick enough himself, thanks very much. It took almost everything I had just to keep up with him around those corners, so I’m glad we weren’t immediately behind the rollcage brigade. It really was quite quick … the car feels like it’s on rails no matter how hard you push it through corners so there’s no need to brake, which is handy as there wasn’t time to. In fact it went around them even better when I accelerated through them, which felt good to me but I’m not sure what Dad thought of it. Before long my arms started hurting and my clutch foot was ready to give up, but then we rounded a corner and were upon Skenes Creek, where the limit dropped back to 60 and we could trundle for the next few kms into Apollo Bay.

All up it was a great experience. I can see why the club members enjoy these runs – the early start means very little else on the road (i.e. in your way) and a real chance to take a very capable car flat out around corners whilst staying within limits on the straights. The top was down on 90% of the MX-5s the whole way (including ours, naturally) and although it was pretty cold at first it was fantastic to zoom along with the wind in our hair. There’s a lot to be said for open-top motoring.

Thanks again Dad, and I’m glad you’re enjoying being part of the club.

(More photos to come when Dad sends me the ones he took on his camera)

Our friends James and Lou bring their puppy Ellie down to the beach most weekends and she has learnt to enjoy the water, but she’s never actually swum – it’s risky letting her get out of her depth in the surf.

So this morning we walked all the way up to the Barwon Heads bridge so that she could swim in one of the small channels in the river. James picked her up, walked out to the middle of the channel where it was thigh deep, and dropped her in. Naturally she swam to the side like she’d been doing it all her life. I guess it’s hard-wired into a dog’s brain – particularly a Golden Retriever’s.

Swimming like a champion

Happy to have reached the water’s edge

Max showing her how it’s done

The channel at Barwon Heads – perfect for a dog’s first swim

It seems like I write about this walk every weekend. There isn’t much of it left for us to do, so there’ll be something else to read about in a few weeks …

This week, apart from spending a few hours enjoying the scenery and the sea air, the point of walking was to determine whether or not we’re fit enough to walk up Mt Bogong in a couple of weeks. The original plan was to walk from Anglesea to Airey’s Inlet and back, which is a 20km return trip. But the place where we wanted to start the walk looked boring – it was a fire trail through heathland – and a closer inspection of the map showed the trail to continue like that for at least 5km. So we decided against it, drove to the other side of Anglesea and walked to Point Addis along the cliffs instead.

We’ve done this section before but I don’t think I blogged it so here are some photos.

Near the start

Disobeying the park rangers to get closer to the clifftop for a self-timer photo

The self-timer photo

An industrious ant earning his dinner

Deserted beach near Point Addis

Jayne reckons this looks like something carrying something else

More photos in our Picasa gallery.

Re the fitness experiment: this walk took around 3 hours including a stop for coffee and a rest at Point Addis. Not sure how far it is but I’d say we covered around 9-10km. The walk up Bogong is about 7km (one way), but it’s all uphill. No flat sections at all. I suggested that our effort to get up it and back would be roughly the same as walking this walk three times … so I don’t think we’re fit enough to make it at present.

We could try, but when do you make the decision that you either are or aren’t going to make it? If we only get halfway it’ll seem like a waste of time, but if we get 3/4 of the way we’d be really tempted to try to make it. I don’t think we should start a tough, potentially dangerous walk like that unless we’re properly prepared (i.e. fit), so we’ll probably walk Feathertop via Razorback instead. That’s 22km return but mostly flat and although we’ve done it once before (in 2001) it was an amazing walk so we have no qualms about doing it again. But that’s another blog post for another day.

Headed out for a quick wake session on the bay this morning with Iao and Jed. I was a bit tentative – it was my first time back on the board since I tore my ab muscles – but Iao and Jed were sliding around enjoying themselves. Jayne never goes in the bay (sharks, jellyfish, seaweed, plankton) but was content to drive me when I was riding and then lap up the sun for the rest of the time.

We had a minor incident with the boat (which we still haven’t named properly – Tasty / Muchacha / Tight Squeeze / Povvo Pack). After we’d finished riding we decided to zoom out towards Clifton Springs to see if the water was flatter over there, so I opened up the throttle and we whizzed along flat out at around 5,000rpm (55km/h) for 10 minutes or so. Then, for no apparent reason, the revs suddenly dropped, the motor cut out and I couldn’t start it again. Wouldn’t turn over. Apart from the obvious disappointment that the motor was buggered I was slightly gutted that we’d have to row the thing back to the boat ramp, given that we’d travelled roughly 5km.

Then a couple of minutes later she started, so I carefully stuck it in forward and crept along at 1,000rpm for 30 seconds … no problem … then tried it a bit quicker … no problem … then up to 3,000rpm … no problem … back to idle … no problem … back to 3,000rpm … no problem. She was as smooth as silk again.

No idea what happened, but my guess is that the old Chrysler got a bit hot and said “I’ve had enough of this”. It’s 30 years old, after all.

Anyway, doesn’t seem to be any harm done. She started fine when I flushed it out when we got home. Any ideas Matt?

Crappy surf conditions this morning so instead of our routine Saturday morning drive to 13th Beach we decided to walk the Jan Juc to Bells section of the Surf Coast Walk. We’ve done it before but it was good, so we decided to do it again.

The wind was really strong today (Jayne’s hanging on to her hat in the second pic) and it was a little bit overcast – but that’s just what you want on a clifftop walk.

We had more visitors last week: Jayne’s Auntie Heather and Uncle Colin from Wynyard in Tassie arrived on Tuesday at the end of a 7,500km driving trip up the east coast. Jayne and I couldn’t spend much time with them during the week, and they went for a day trip to Bendigo, Ballarat and Daylesford on the Saturday, but we enjoyed spending time with them in the evenings and on Sunday.

We decided to do a bit more of the Surf Coast Walk on Sunday morning – the Bells Beach to Point Addis section. I thought it would be a great morning to do it, as there was a bit of a sea breeze blowing, the swell was up and the cliffs would be spectacular.

We set off just after 11am from the Southside car park, which is where Jayne and I walked to from Bells a few weeks ago. The path tracked inland a bit at first and was surprisingly narrow and poorly-maintained, compared to the other sections that we’ve walked, but we kept going, expecting to round a bend and see an amazing bay or clifftop at any moment.

Strangely, clifftops and bays and well-maintained tracks were not forthcoming. The track wound its way inland through a big ironbark forest, away from the cliffs (and the seabreeze) and down (and up) some steep gullies. After about 45 minutes we passed a couple of mountain bikers who told us that another 20 mins walk would see us at the top of the Point Addis Road. I knew that was at least 2km from the steps down to the beach, and as we had no water, no food and it was bloody hot we decided to turn back! We probably could have made it and then walked the return along the beach but we didn’t want to push our luck without water.

It was still a beautiful walk, and Jayne and I will have another crack at it one day to finish it, but it surprised us by being so different from the other sections we’ve walked. It was bushwalking as opposed to cliff/beach walking.

A few pics ….. some from my cameraphone and some from Colin’s flashy camera.

It was great to spend some time with them at the end of their driving trip!