The Heat is on....but not for long

We left the farm and made our way to Geelong for the family connection but we had a couple of stops on the way:  firstly, Bendigo and the first unit Steve and I lived in together in 1983-4 and it is still there but looking a little worse for wear.

The town has not changed that much but it certainly has gone ahead with new buildings etc.
Our next stop was Ballarat to meet up with Cheryl and Bob, who we met in Port Douglas August 2012 on our return trip from The Cape and we always love a home cooked meal (thank you for lunch) and we got to look at their new TVan, very nice might I add.
We made it to Geelong in time for  dinner, we seem to always arrive somewhere at meal time - it is not intensional. It was so good to see Barbara, Steve's mum in the South.  In Geelong we had two hot days of about 34C which were fine for us but not so nice for the native Victorians but then the weather changed and we nearly had to dig out our winter woollies and it almost rained....but only almost. 
Monday 18 Feb we went shopping, we shopped till we dropped and it was nice to be in the air con but we walked our legs off.  I bought a new smart phone, nothing fancy, but I'm still trying to work it out, so if you ring me and I don't answer its because I'm still trying to figure out how to answer the silly thing!
Tuesday 19 February marked our 30th Wedding Anniversary and we spent a lovely lunch at the Parisian down at Western Beach, even though it was windy and a little cool we had a lovely day.
Wednesday we got to catch up with Steve's brother Mark and we all went out for dinner, again a lovely time.

 

 

Thursday it was time to drive to Melbourne, we found our way to Port Melbourne to catch the Spirit of Tasmania,

it was a little wait to start boarding but once it starts its a race to get on first.  We watch the traffic for a while and when it all died down we drove on...or so we thought.  There is a security check and then drive on, waited on the pier in queues,

then check in to get our boarding passes and cabin keys, then waiting in more queues for about one hour till we were allowed on the boat

and we ended up parking 2nd in line to the front to drive off...yippey...but that means need to get to the car fairly quickly so we don't hold up the traffic and we get a wake up call at 5.45am...oh I am so not a morning person!!!

The last bit of blue sky in Melbourne for the day

Goodbye Melbourne