Holidays!

A great thing about my shift system is that when I finish a set of nights on the Wednesday morning, I'm off then until Monday morning.  Woo hoo!  It's even better when you and the other radiographer you're working with coincidently nod off for most of the night on alternating nights.  Nod off on a trolley. With blankets. And the lights off.

And so it was on Wednesday morning, bright as a button, I picked up a hire car from town ready for our epic journey to Melbourne, via some mountains called the Grampians.  We got a nice big Toyota Camry as our little Ford Festiva, whilst I'm sure would have kept working, would've just been tiresome.  It's rattlier than a rattle snake inside a rattle at a rattle convention in a rickety shed during an earthquake.  'Festiva' is of course ancient Navaho Indian for 'noisy slow beast'.  Nor has it got power steering, and most crucially, cruise control.  The decision to live with just one low budget car I've taken with the idea in the back of my mind we'd hire a good one for long trips.  As it was, it was only $33 per day for a full size car, which is significantly cheaper than I recall car hire in Europe being.

You see, it was a very long way.

We drove for 1850km. That's 1,150 miles in old money, and certainly the furthest I've ever driven in 2 goes.  We knew it would be along way, but have just accepted that's part of living in Australia.  It's big, so things are far apart.

To break our journey, we stopped the night on the way there and back in Halls Gap, in the Grampians. It's a stunningly beautiful place with mountain ridges, waterfalls and forests. Raw nature - usually with a convenient car park and toilets a short walk from the best bits, which was great for us.  It's a unique time to see the landscape there.  2 years ago, most of it was burned in huge bush fires.  All the forests are recovering now, but nearly every tree trunk is charred black.

We stayed in a cabin in caravan park that a friend had recommended which was next to a lake and surrounded by sandstone cliffs.  I felt like Dr Doolittle or Mary Poppins in the morning when I came out to find wild kangaroos, a kookaburra and cockatoos (no rude gags, please) hanging around our cabin.  Robert and Owen got to feed the Rosellas too, which they loved.

After Halls Gap it was on to Melbourne to stay with my Uncle Charlie and Aunties Linda and Anita, and 3 of my Australian cousins.  It was really good to see this side of our family again.  Last time we saw them was 2 and a half years ago when we came on holiday, so it was good to catch up.  We took the boys to Melbourne Aquarium, which was well worth a visit.  We took Sharon to Pin Oak Court - otherwise known as Ramsey Street! I was too embarrassed to get out of the car - at first. I could hear my Mum's voice in my head, "Ooh, you can't go noseying at peoples houses".  So I let Sharon do the dirty work first, and once I saw her chatting to the security guard and that it was ok, I joined in and got disturbingly excited.  It seemed much, much smaller than on TV, and it was really strange to see a place that's always been there in the televisual background for over 20 years, in real life.

I'd booked the Monday off work too, so we could stop over in Halls Gap again on the Sunday night.

If it makes any of you in England feel better though, a persistent feature of the holiday was the weather.  It was brass monkeys.