Mornington Penninsula

No man is an island - he's a penninsula. -Buffalo Springfield

So we cut the planned 2 month WWOOFing stay to 2 weeks and get on with our vacationing.

Just in time for Melbourne Cup Day. Yes, it's a national holiday for the horse race. Damn near everything was closed, but fortunately for us the international chains don't take national holidays that seriously, so we were able to get (back) into the Best Western in Frankston.

Vacationing? I thought we were done with that after Hawaii. Unfortunately we're now somewhat turned off to the idea of WWOOFing or other work exchange, and are back to motels, restuarant eating and renting cars. There go the expenses through $200/day again. But it's a dilemma - if we WWOOf we don't have time or the freedom to explore, if we don't WWOOF this trip is gonna be a lot shorter.

Another problem is that living in motels and visiting tourist places makes us - tourists. We meet only other tourists, aren't getting any real connection to the the locale, and because every place we've stayed so far is rather out of our budget, we keep moving on to the next. There's no sense of stability or settled-ness for the kids, or us for that matter.

But all that aside, this is one gorgeous piece of Australia. The beaches are beautiful and uncrowded, the headlands are spectacular, and even the little (touristy) towns are quite nice, although each and every one has a KMart, a Coles and a Safeway. Still it's amazing to find this much mostly pristine land a couple hours from a city of 4 Million.

After a couple nights in the non-descript (that's it's appeal, right?) Best Western Frankston, we rented a car (Thrifty, $33/day for a small 4 door) and made tracks down the Mornington penninsula. After the shopping mall known as Frankston the little tourist/holiday towns of Mornington, Rosebud, Rye, Sorrento, and Portsea were an improvement. There were beaches (although the water was cold enough that I didn't stay in very long), upscale shopping, coffee schoppes, gelatto grotto's and - thrift stores (colloq: Op Shops).

Yes every little main street had not one but several such stores, which it seems Francie cannot go past with developing a severe itch in her shopping appendage. So we'd stop at every one. I'd hang out on the street and watch the Sheila's go by, the kids would get bored and bug us to buy ice cream, candy, movies, arcade time, whatever, or to go to the beach (which after all is why we're here, right?) So after an hour or so of this we'd go find a beach, the kids would immediately hit the water and we'd go for a walk and decide which expensive restuarant to have dinner in. We sampled food and looked at rooms in the Portsea Pub and Sorrento's, eventually settling on the Rosebud Inn for the night. It was sweet, nothing fancy, and nicely priced, with a beach right across the road.

Everything here seems to close up at 4:30, maybe 5PM. We got to the Nepean Point National Park about 5:30, only to find it all locked up. So we went to a "back beach", London Bridge. The back beaches, facing Bass Strait are the place to be! They have nice big rollers, big rocky headlands, really spectacular sand stone shelves extending out into the surf, alternating with magical sandy beaches - and almost nobody there. In the 2 days we spent walking and climbing there, we saw 4 surfers (all together), a half dozen other local folks and no Germans.














So here's an oddity. I've been in Australia for most of a month now, in Sydney, Melbourne, French Island and the incomparable vacation land of Mornington. But I still haven't see a single kangaroo, thrown (or even seen) a boomarang, or heard a didgeradoo. Did I miss the real Australia somewhere back there in the rolling grassy hills between Sydney and Melbourne?

While waiting for Francie to finish her tour of the local St Vincents in Rosebud, I ducked into a toy shop. They had all manner of puzzles, board games, card games, some kites, several frisbees, and a whole wall dedicated to practical jokes around farts, but not a single boomarang or didgeradoo. Oh, there was a puzzle featuring pieces shaped vaguely like a kangaroo, but that's all. Upon questioning, the proprietor confessed they don't sell indigenous items, but if I wanted a real boomarang, Victoria Street up in Melbourne has a store that sells certified indigenous items. I was sure to find a didgeradoo there. And he even thought I might find somebody who knew how play one, but he wasn't sure about finding somebody who knew how to throw a boomarang.

I noticed that the newer condo type houses in Frankston all had canvas shades hung tight over their patios in a quaternary curve, either 3 or 4 cornered. This reminded me of going to the best tent maker in Albany and asking for a boom tent cut with a quaternary for my boat. He had no idea what I was talking about, and never did produce the desired curve. So much for tent math...

We had breakfast and some internet time at the only internet cafe I've seen since Hawaii in Sorrento. It's called the Sunnyside Up (yep, just like the Sunnyside Up in Corvallis), and while the internet access wasn't free, the food was good and the atmosphere polite.

After breakfast we walked on the beach across the street from the cafe and right next to the ferry terminal. There was a school group there, middle school girls, having a very good time splashing in the shallows. Their teacher called them in for a lecture, which I audited. (Picking up tips for teaching our kids.) I learned that there are 2 kinds of ocean waves, constructive and destructive; they can either build beach by leaving sand or tear down beach/headlands by removing material. The penninsula has obvious cases of each on opposite sides.