Up to the big city of Melbourne

We left Drysdale area after 10:30am. We planned to get on the road earlier, but we were enjoying time with our hosts. Ruth made pancake breakfast for everyone, and of course with real Canadian maple syrup on top!

Once again, we had some showers in the morning, but it did clear up at times. Still, they are calling for "the coldest temperatures of the season" in this area, and the news media is all over that.

But winter here? Hey, when there are palm trees lining the streets, and flowers blooming, it's not much of a winter for us hardy Canadians!

Kevin, Ruth, Garth, and Jude.

Thanks for your hospitality!

First stop was the small city of Geelong. Pronounced like "J'long". It's a nice little city. Along the waterfront area, they have a lot of pole statues. Really cute and fun.

Ruth, posing with the bathing beauties.

And me, with the men's lifesaving team, displaying the changing styles of men's swim trunks!

And the band plays on.

Do you know what the lady said to the sailor?

Geelong waterfront.

Fishermen wasting some time on Geelong pier.

The Geelong Swim Club.

Cute little copper statues.

The Geelong pier.

An older Geelong building.

We walked through the downtown area as well, but it wasn't anything special. Many of the buildings have been turned into a big indoor shopping mall.

We hopped on the freeway heading up to the big city of Melbourne (pop 4.5 million) and made our way to the community of Yarraville.

Through facebook, an Australian RV'er had contacted us and asked if we needed somewhere free to overnight near the city. We were originally going to avoid the city, but with an invitation like that we changed our minds.

Yep, this will do just fine.

Thanks again Chris!

And we were even offered an electrical outlet, so we are plugged in for the first time since we hit the road here in Australia!

We're going to stay parked here for two nights. Just long enough to head into the city on a Sunday and just spend the day seeing the major attractions.

I thought we were going to be walking distance from downtown, and we sort of are.. but it's about 7 kms (4.5 miles) each way so we will likely take the train. We'll be doing enough walking around once we're actually there.

But, we arrived in Yarraville early enough to go and wander around for a couple of hours. We decided on a biking/walking trail that follows the Maribyrnong River west of Melbourne. It looked like we might be able to get a view of the Melbourne skyline from this area, so we went walking looking for a viewpoint...

Well, the park is nice but the view of downtown doesn't quite cut it.

The Docklands area is being spruced up.

Now a light industrial area.

The bike paths have repair stations!

A little better view of downtown. 

But not good enough yet.

The shipping yards.

A male magpie-lark.

Ruth, trying out the free rock climbing wall!

That's a better view of the city!

Melbourne skyline. 

This shot taken with the cell phone.

We ended up doing almost 8 kms (5 miles).

We'll have a relaxing night in the camper, then we will go into the city for the whole day on Sunday.

Satruday's drive, 90 kms (55 miles).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Great deal on this Telescopic Extension Ladder. Be quick, this price won't last long!

And in Canada...

Check out the deals at Amazon.ca