Day 13 - Melbourne to Torquay

Ulls: Melbourne to Torquay, the Longway Round!

We had a great time in Melbourne. I absolutely love the city. It's one place so far on this trip, this tour of Australia, that I could move to. I might just have to bring some sunshine with me.

Meeting some of the Melbourne Scooter Connection at the Rubicon in North Melbourne, we enjoyed a fantastic breaky before hitting the streets of Melbourne. We rode through the town a bit before leaving the city limits. Our small group headed for The Brisbane Ranges National Park, west of Melbourne, through sweeping plains and farming land, to forests before the landscape gave way to winery country. I'll tell you one thing. Victoria must have the been the sample pot for Australia when the country was created. In this tiny state, you've got just about everything, including culture. It's just fantastic.

Before long, Paul led us off the road on to what I originally believed to be a driveway to a winery. 10km later and I had to give in to the fact that we were indeed riding offroad. The dirt continued through what seemed to be a forest from the set of a scary movie, and about 5km later we emerged from the Evil Wood. One disadvantage of riding the PX is having to keep an eye on the fuel. Before too long we had our first casualties in that department, followed by Torstens engine also dying of thirst. The team pulled together and organised the delivery of fuel to those that needed it.

We said our goobyes at this stage and filmed the gang as they scooted off into the setting sun. We knew we needed to push on also as we wanted to reach that start of the Great Ocean Road before dark. We were on our own again, excited again about the adventures to come. The fact that there is still 23,000km to go hasn't set in yet and we're both still very much looking forward to each day. I'm sure the honeymoon will end soon...

(I apologise for the lack of distances in this entry as I left the log book in our motel room. I have also been doing this entry on a pc that's stuck in bloody spanish, in a room full of multiplayer hardcore gamers yelling and screaming, so I've managed to delete this entry once already... arrggghh!!)