Melbourne, Mallacoota & Manly

On Sunday we started to head towards Sydney. In my wisdom I thought it would be a great idea for us to drive from Melbourne to Sydney, as last time Louisa and I flew and missed out on what I thought was so much scenery.

To break up the journey, we decided to head for a little town called Mallacoota for the night. Lonely Planet said it would be good, and it was nice but we were too shattered to appreciate it properly. It seemed another world away, another generation even. We had driven about 8 hours to get there, and when we arrived at our "Hotel Motel", I confess to being relieved that we were only there for the night. We went in the bar, which felt very 'local-pub-for-local-people' to me. It seemed to be the main hub of the area though, and when we went through to the Bistro I wouldn't have believed the building was the same. The atmosphere changed completely into a very family/visitor-friendly dining area. The food was good - quite basic but nice. At least one of the guys serving did seem to resemble a character from Grease too, which made me smile.

The hotel had advertised wireless Internet, so we enquired about this and were met with great confused faces. It was as if they had never heard of the Internet, let alone wireless. After much searching around for someone who had heard of said Internet, they came back to suggest we went across the road to the Post Office. So we gave up and went back to planning our route the old fashioned way, by book & map!

This may all sound like I'm dissing Mallacoota, I'm not. I just think it was one of the more surreal places we've been to so far. In the morning they certainly redeemed themselves and gave us loads of maps to help us on our way. By this time we had decided we would not bother with Canberra as it would probably have been another several hour detour to somewhere with not much in it. Instead, we headed straight for Sydney. On our way out of Mallacoota we saw our first live Kangaroo staring straight at us (I didn't hit him). We'd seen loads of dead ones on the road, and the back of one at night time in Phillip Island, but this was the first wild one in broad daylight.

On the way to Sydney, we Stopped in a little town called Narooma which the Lonely Planet reckoned was a sleepy little village filled with retirees. It didn’t really seem filled with retirees, but it was quite sleepy – most places have their day off on Mondays. Doh! We managed to get some food at a pub though and it had really lovely views of the sea.

Oh, and at one point we had to stop at some rest rooms. Now, I'm not normally freaked out easily, but I didn't 'rest' in these rooms - there was an ant the size of a caterpillar on the floor and lots of other creepy crawlies. The loo wasn't a proper loo, and was worse than something you'd get at your average music festival. Yuk! Sorry, you probably didn't need to know all that, but as I'd gone through the experience I thought I should share it with everyone else!!

With regards to the drive from Melbourne to Sydney, in hindsight I am glad we drove it, but next time I think I'll fly again. Sydney is about a 12 hour journey from Melbourne. Mallacoota was still about 10 hours away from our final destination, Manly, just outside Sydney.

Manly is a lovely little beach side town. Chris and I went to the beach yesterday and practically got knocked out by the waves. I can see why surfing is so popular in Australia. We're staying in Manly Beach House, which is a hostel that boasts a 5 minute walk to the beach. Either I walk very slowly, or they should correct it to about 15 minutes but it's still close enough for me! In addition, they advertise a free 'washing machine' & cheap dryers, plus parking. The washing machine hasn't been delivered yet, I don't think there's a tumble dryer and we've had to move our car twice to allow builders to park in the drive! Still, the owner Dev makes up for it with his very cheerful, relaxed & friendly approach. The hostel is really clean and nice too so I'd still recommend the place to anyone coming to Manly. We went for a Japanese meal last night which was really nice. Hopefully we'll be able to find something a bit more Australian as we get up North.

I'm still not very well so we're still having to take it easy but as we're coming back to Sydney for New Year that suits me just fine. Better go now, we're off to Sydney city to meet an old school friend of Chris' who had no idea Chris was in Oz but had suggested that if he ever fancied a trip they should meet up for a drink. So that's what we're off to do. Small world!

To keep you going, here's some more photos which you should be able to access even if you're not on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=137816&id=669980946&l=602e2911a5

Speak soon.

Hannah

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