Adventures and life: Down to Eden

Ok, so here's the first half of the trip down to Melbourne.

On the thursday before we left, we rented a little car and drove down the coast to the city of Melbourne in the state of Victoria. It's quite the drive, almost 1200km, so we opted to do it in a few days, and stay a night and a day in a little seaside town called Eden which was about half way. The drive out of the city was supposedly straightforward except for a bit near downtown where there are exits and bridges and off ramps and toll booths galore. Cathleen gave us excellent directions, which if we followed to the t, we would have been fine. However (and there's always a however...) one part which required us to be in the far left lane before going over the harbour bridge, we neglected to do. In my defense as the navigator, I thought we were in the far left lane, but there was a bus lane between us and the curb that apparently also had a lane beside it as well that I didn't see... So needless to say we ended up downtown in the lunch rush hour. It was mayhem. One way streets, bumper to bumper cars, and we had to try and make our way out of this madness and back onto the Princess Highway. Thankfully we had a decent map, and between my mad navigating skills, and Marc's mad driving skills, we made it out of downtown in somewhere around 10 or 15 minutes. To go 4 blocks. And we took the shortest possible route. So back on track again, we cruised along, making relatively good time despite the diversion. We managed to make it almost out of town before making another wrong turn. Actually, we didn't turn, and that was the problem. Looking at the map, I thought I saw a more scenic shortcut that may have helped us make up some of the time lost in downtown, so we carried on straight when the signs were pointing us to the right. As it turns out, the road I was directing us toward was not the Princes Highway, it was in fact some other highway heading for some other town. The highway we wanted to go on appeared to split into two on the map, and i thought I was following the one we wanted, when I really wasn't. Not to huge a deal though, we backtracked a couple km's and easily got back on the right road. Strike 2 for the navigator. Oh, just for the record, I didn't make Marc do all the driving because I didn't feel like it. Believe it or not, I'm not old enough. I suppose it's the same deal here, but you have to be at least 25 to drive a rental car, and I am only 24. Sigh. I really wanted to try driving on the other side of the road too!

At around 2:00pm our tummies began to get too loud to ignore for much longer, Jeremiah had been sleeping for the past 3 hours, and was starting to stir, meaning within 15 minutes he'd be fully awake and very hungry. We were passing trough a little town called Berry anyhow, and I had seen a sign on the edge of town pointing toward a wood fired bakery, so we turned around and sought the place out. It turned out to be really good. We had lunch there as it had a restaurant part to it as well, and it was delicious. I fed and changed Jeremiah, Marc Bought a baguette, and we were on our way again by 3. By 6:30 we were running short on gas, Jeremiah was stirring again, and we needed to figure out what we were going to do about supper. Bega, the next town on the map, wasn't too far off so we opted to have our next pit stop there. As Marc was filling the tank with gas I took Jeremiah out to stretch my legs and his, which was much needed after sitting for 3 1/2 hours. I wandered into the little convenience store, and asked the older fellow behind the counter if there was a grocery shop near by. He said there was a woolies across the car park on the other side of the street. Translation, there was a Woolworths (Ausie grocery chain) on the other side of the parking lot. Brilliant! I told Marc that Jam and I were going to wander over there while he finished up with the car. We got a few groceries, used the facilities, I fed and changed Jeremiah, and we were on our way once again. 60km to go!

Pulling into Eden at 7:45pm, I was a tad nervous, only because I hadn't checked what time the office of the Fountain Caravan Park we were staying at closed. As we pulled up, the receptionist was just sliding the closed sign over the open one just outside the office door. *few!* Couldn't have been better timing. They closed at 8. I hopped out of the car saying "please don't close yet!!" and she laughed and said I still had a few more minutes as it wasn't quite 8:00 yet. I followed her into the front office and gave her my name. "Aaah yes" she said, "McIlveen... Now I have had a bunch of fishermen check into the cabin next to the one you booked, and I think they'll be quite noisy." My heart sunk a tad thinking about how many more times Jeremiah would wake up in the night because of the noisy neighbours... "So I've upgraded you to a luxury cabin. Here's your key and card pass, it's the first cabin on your right inside the gate." I thanked her profusely, knowing full well that the luxury cabin was over double the cost per night of the single I had reserved. And they still only charged us for the small cabin! We are very blessed. Here are a few pictures of the place. It was much nicer than I had imagined. Oh, don't mind the mess... I tried get Marc to wait before taking them so I could tidy up but he insisted it didn't matter. :P