Day 51

Creswick NP in Creswick was our next home base. This is a free camp 3km via dirt road in the forest by a little creek that has lots of gold in it. Or at least had lots of gold in it, now its just full of prospectors moving sand around. Do they find any? Yes, enough to make them keep coming back. Did we find any? Look at it this way - no...bugger. Here are some pictures;

 

Is that gold? Yea Baby, 2 pin-sized specks and only after 2 hours of shovelling!

The camp ground

And again

...And again.

 

 We stayed here for a week and a half...loved it. It was here that I started washing all of our items by hand and it was back breaking, but yet satisfying as we didn’t have to pay to have it done. As we were here so long, we visited Daylesford;...

Daylesford Botanic Gardens

Local accommodation was a bit shabby! kidding.

 

A view from the tower in the middle of the gardens

The tower from below, you climb up a circular staircase in the centre.

Another view from the top

 

...Lavendulla lavender farm;

Kids, don't play near this one! This caravan come with its own heater - may need TLC.

 

...Mt Franklin - where you can camp in the centre of an extinct volcano;

On the right was the flat plug of the volcano and on the left was the inside wall.

There was a long walk to the crest...we didn't walk, we went as intended - in a car.

 

...Ballarat a couple of times;

This is the botanic gardens - we seem to visit a lot of them.

This was a duck we found which the kids thought was a cross between a duck, a chicken and a platypus - we named it a dickypus. We agreed this was not a good name but used it anyway.

 

...had a good look around Creswick and even drove to Melbourne after visiting Bacchus Marsh for their strawberry and cherry festival. Bacchus Marsh is a very nice town.

A cherry farm

A German music machine - we did no closeup photos as there seemed to be a number of carved bare breasted ladies adorning the front.

Day 61

Moving on is inevitable, however, and the Mornington Peninsula was our next stop. To do this we to do a little jaunt through the middle of Melbourne city centre with our 5 tonne 19meter home. We braced ourselves, gritted our teeth and set the GPS.

Saw this sign on the way and had a bit of a laugh. It originally said "No right turn into Marriage Road" but you can do anything with photoshop.

 

The camp ground wasn’t all that fantastic, but the kids loved the beach, we rode our bikes and the little towns in the area were nice to visit.

The parking spot

 

The entrance to the walkway to the beach

 

The short walkway

 

Da Beach!! And yes it was as good as it looked!

 

We also went for a ride as the entire beach is linked with easy to ride tracks. At Rye we found a massive playground for the kids and the beach only seemed to improve.

We also went for a drive to the farthest extent of the peninsula. The end of the road becomes a massive park with many kilometres of bike paths, walking tracks, historical sites and awesome views.

These photos do not do it justice. We did not have the time to investigate and photograph properly but will be back. We had to go as we were booked on the Spirit of Tasmania...