Day 322 / 2015 - Port Stephens to Geelong

Our final leg is from Port Stephens back to Melbourne. We now only have 2 weeks before our flight departs for Perth to return us home for the Christmas Break.

We have pushed our return home forward and will be instead returning to Bunbury on the 26th of November. We have been unable to secure our normal storage place at this point as the Proprieter is in the process of moving his storage premises so as a backup plan we have started to look for alternative storage in case they are still not ready by the time we get back to Melbourne.

We decided on returning to Melbourne via the Hume as we have already taken this route previously on the way up and to take a new road of that distance in such a short period wouldn't give us enough time to explore or linger longer if we found a place we liked. Leaving Port Stevens we were reminded about what happens when your rush or don't pay attention when driving. The 4WD was on its side slowing down traffic heading in both directions. Travelling South was uneventful we drove straight through Sydney via the motorsways timing it so that we passed through about lunch time hopping the traffic would be flowing smoothly around that time. The Hume while a bit boring is the easest way to get from Sydney to Melbourne. We spent a night at Gunning Show Grounds then a couple of days in Wodonga as we hadn't stopped there before.

Leaving Wodonga we headed south planning to stop at a free camp but we couldn't find one suitable so ended up driving all the way into Geelong. Booking into Eldorado Tourist Park which is located just out of Geelong on the Ballarat Rd we setup for the next 3 days before our scheduled flight home for Christmas. It wasn't a bad park but pretty basic all the sites were chrushed limestone but each had an ensuite shower and toilet. This suited us fine as we wanted to clean and dry out the shower and toilet for the 7 seven weeks of storage.

We checked out the car and van storage location which is run by Fry's Storage company. The shed was reasonable size but there were lots of poles supporting the roof which will make things awkward getting our van into its storage spot the car would be simple enough though. The managment team were friendly and very helpful and although the shed was old you could see that a lot of restoration work had been done such as replacing the leaky roof. There were plenty of security cameras and rodent bait strategically placed around the walls.

During our stay we caught up Stacey and Brad for dinner at one of their favorite spots "Le Parisien" but were unable to catch up with Graham and Rhonda as they were out of town at the time. Geelong was very decorated very festively there was a big floating Xmas tree in the middle of the Harbour which at certain times of the night played christmas carols and lit up with flashing coloured lights. Most of our time in Geelong though was spent cleaning inside and out of both car and van.

The day before our flight out we moved the van and car into storage. Driving to location was easy getting into the storage bay prove to be a more difficuit task. At one stage we though it wasn't going to happen but finally found the right way to manovere and squeezed into our dedicated space. I started thinking about how were we going to get the van out again but decided that was a worry for the future at this point the van and car were safely stored. We isolated all the 12 power and made sure the fridge was off with the doors open. There wont be any charging power so I hoped what little light fell on the solar panel was enough to keep the battery topped up. We had recently service on the car with fresh oil and the oil filter changed and filled the fuel tanks to keep the air volume to a minumum reducing chance of moisture accumulating in the tank. We will just have to hope the battery still works after 7 weeks.

Finishing up at the storage shed the Fry's Manager organised a taxi to North Geelong train station from where we caught the train to Melbourne Central Station. Our flight was at Seven in the morning so we decided to stay at the Ibis Hotel convienently located at the airport we could easly walk the 400 metres to the airport. To get to the Ibis from Central Station in Melbourne we caught the sky bus to the airport which was a lot cheaper than a taxi the walk to the hotel to check in. We had a hickup as they didn't have our booking. It was a bit of a mad scramble to find a copy of the booking number but we finally located it in one of the emails on a laptop with the battery going flat. It seemed something went wrong between the online booking agents and the hotel but we had conformation of payment and finally we were able to get into our room.

Next morning early we checked out and headed for the airport walking the 400 metres. We had already confirmed our flights online so it was just a case of placing our bags on the automatic baggage checking then head through the security gate for the lounge. Boarding our flight we settled in for the trip back to Perth.

We would like to wish everyone a merry christmas and a happy new year and hope you will all follow us again when we start again next year.