Bendigo to Melbourne

Our first port of call in BENDIGO was the information centre where it so happened the local Morse Code Club was giving a demonstration. Cameron became completely absorbed in the concept and watched fascinated as the operator tapped out a Morse Code message with his name in it, to a fellow operator in BEECHWORTH which is a town up in Ned Kelly Country.  He was even more fascinated when another message came dit-dah-ing back which the operator quickly typed up into a telegram which read “Hi Cameron my name is Leo and I am sending you this message from Ned Kelly Country”.  Cameron also got to spell out his name using Morse Code on the Morse Code Key.  Needless to say the telegram will be going into our scrapbook.

That took care of the morning.  In the afternoon we wandered about the city catching up on some arrangements for our Broadband connection, making enquiries at the Post Office about forwarding Mail, and some grocery shopping. By then we had had enough of the 40 degree heat, so it was back to our campground at MARONG for a swim and a cold beer or two.  So we have now had two full days in Bendigo and still haven’t seen anything, and tomorrow we have to head down to Melbourne to drop the van off at Creative Caravans so they can fix all the little problems.

Thursday morning we drove down to Melbourne, a distance of only 163 km.  When we left Marong it was a beautiful clear sunny day, but as we got closer to Melbourne ran into to heavy fog and drizzle.  We also watched with some alarm as the thermometer in the dash dropped from 38 degrees, finally settling on 18 as we got to the outskirts of Melbourne. Luckily it had cleared to overcast by the time we arrived at Creative.  We met Emma, the girl we had been emailing about all our problems.  She was very apologetic and took down a list of the faults we had.  She promised to have them fixed while we were in TASMANIA, and had also arranged storage, free of charge, for the van while we were away. She also directed us to a nearby caravan superstore where we spotted a KIPOR Generator for sale, which we very quickly put a deposit on.  We had been recommended these generators by other campers, but they are as rare as hens teeth because they are considerably cheaper than similar models, and also any generator in Australia is being gobbled up and sent north for the flood and cyclone victims.  The guy in the shop said he had ordered 100, but only received 20.  We also made enquiries about a metal box to mount on the rear towbar of the van to hold the generator and fuel cans.  All lockable of course.

Then it was off to our motorcamp to spend the night before catching the ferry to Tasmania.  We are booked on the 9.00am sailing, but have to be at the ferry by 8.00am.  We have been told to allow at least 30 minutes travel time from the camp to the ferry, but not wanting to take any chances, we plan to leave camp at 6.30, just in case anything ‘goes wrong’.  Little did we know?  Watch this space.!!!!!