Melbourne Travel Answers

I don't think you'll be visiting too many nude beaches around Melbourne at that time of the year! As far as beekeeping goes, there a a business called Beechworth Honey who are between Sydney and Melbourne. There contact is in a place called Corowa which is not so interesting but they have a Honey Experience Centre in Beechworth and Beechworth is a lovely country town that you might enjoy visiting not far off the Hume Freeway. Maybe email them and see if you can arrange a catch up with them. The website is beechworthhoney.com.au/conta.... You could come from Canberra via an alternative route over the New South Wales High country then Beechworth which would take longer but would be far more scenic. From Melbourne you might like to visit the penguins at Phillip Island where you would probably need to stay overnight. The Dandenong Ranges are a nice day trip from Melbourne for nature. The Melbourne Botanic Gardens are beautiful. Go for a walk along the St Kilda Esplanade. There is a market there on Sundays and some great restaurants. You must take the Great Ocean Road between Melbourne and Adelaide.

Hi Ken, I cant advise on where to find bees (I just like the end product) but I can give you a couple of suggestions while you are in Melbourne. Melbourne is a wonderful cosmopolitan city. There are some great museums, stately mansions such as Ripponlea in Elsternwick, Botanic gardens, markets, beachside suburbs(St Kilda and Port Melbourne),live theatre, cafes and restaurants so you could spend 1 to 2 weeks exploring the city itself. Outside the city you could take a trip on the Puffing Billy steam train from Belgrave in the Dandenongs outer Melbourne suburb)to Emerald Lake. (My VT friend Sirgaw has a great page on this - he is a conductor on the train!) Although it is a bit of a detour, if time allows I suggest driving down to the Mornington Peninsula, doing a spot of wine tasting along the way, then staying at a holiday park onroute. No need to retrace your journey as you can then take the vehicular ferry from Sorrento to Queenscliff and continue on to the Great Ocean Road which as suggested is not to be missed. Happy travels. Heidi

Firstly, early congartulations on your 75th and well done for planning such a great trip for it. I can offer nothing in the way of advice for the route but I would just make this point. Have you researched the practicalities of long-distance travel at 74 / 75? I am hugely in favour of it and hope I will still be doing so 20 odd years hence. I do know that when my father reached 70 travel insurance became prohibitively expensive, and now he is over 80 it is all but impossible (he is a UK resident and in good health). I do not know how old your partner is and who will be driving but I just had a quick look online at campervan hire etc. in Sydney and at least one company has an upper age limit of 70. Obviously, I have not researched this fully and hopefully you already have. I am not tryng to dissuade you at all, indeed I hope you get it sorted and have an absolutely wonderful trip, I am merely tryng to point out some potential difficulties you may encounter. Hope this assists, fergy.

Thanks for the comment Heidi - and yes I am on Puffing Billy and it is well-worth a trip on the 110 + year old train (not quite as old as you will be next year - :)) ). The main destination - Lakeside - has a lake and a park which is well worth wandering through. There is a flock of wild Crimson Rosella's (parrots) that will land on your hand and eat wild bird mix seeds. I was there today and tried to get the birds tp go and eat from other peoples hands so I could have my lunch - good fun. There are a few 'free beaches' around Melb - sorry I don't have any details. I second the suggestion of the Great Ocean Road (GOR) from Melb towards Adelaide. Suggest a MINIMUM of 3 days for the GOR alone. When you drive into South Australia (state) check out The Coorong, which is an inland waterway and a haven for birds. Before venturing onto Kangaroo Island please check out VT Forum temporarily unavailable regarding taking rental vehicles onto the island - it is quite possible that you won't be able to take the campervan to KI I'm thinking that you have about 25 days in total - maybe you might be doing too much in the time you have available. Possibility of dropping The Grampians for GOR might make more sense = but others may disagree. Still lots of time to plan.

The Great Ocean Road is a fantastic trip, not to be missed. Puffing Billy was very good, too if you like steam trains(my husband loves them). In Melbourne itself the old Melbourne goal was interesting , as was the Botanic Gardens, St Kilda's, Brighton Beach. There was a free tram round the central Melbourne area. I also liked having a look at Captain Cook's cottage shipped out to Melbourne from England. Melbourne zoo was also good. There were several trips available to go and view penguins I remember but we did not get round to this. (There was another interesting place we visited. I want to call it Williamstown but feel this may not be the correct name - sure someone will correct me - it had pelicans swimming in its bay and a pub called after the Titanic).

Fergy Being new to the site I hope you will be able to read my appreciation for contributing to my Sydney to Adelaide question. First things first. My partner will be 35 years old at the time of our visit to Australia and as his employment is driving a large emergency vehicle he should easily cope with a 4-berth campervan. Regarding long-distance travel at 75 years. Thankfully my health is pretty good but like the majority of travellers being shut up in a pressurised cabin for even three or four hours is unpleasant enough so the 24 hours getting to Australia, just as I found when I travelled to New Zealand a few years back, is not the most pleasurable experience. But hopefully a 2 or 3 day stopover in possibly Hong Kong and couple of early nights in Sydney will soon put the internal clock back to normal operation. But the Sydney to Adelaide journey we are planning I believe involves a little over 1000 miles of driving and as we plan to take 10 days to cover that distance I believe that’s not too strenuous an itinerary. I will admit it’s not only 100 miles today, but tomorrow too and the day after that as well. But hopefully David will cope despite the fact that the campervan will NOT be fitted with blue flashing lights and sirens. (lol) As I also use to drive an emergency vehicle (much smaller but much faster than David’s) I will simply be used as the back-up driver (and brewer of copious cups of tea and maker of bacon sandwiches). But just as I experienced in NZ if you tire, well you take a day off or even book into a hotel/motel for a night in order to get into a normal bed. Your travel insurance statement is a very valid one as even for European travel at my current age I get a little hammered financially. But in the last couple of years I have obtained insurance to the USA without any significant loading (but agreed I have now passed the 70 year old post line). Unfortunately we cannot book our flights until November of this year (11 months before return date I am informed) so can see little point in taking out insurance until then. Should the cost then prove to be prohibitive, well we will just have to be grown-up people, tell ourselves it was enjoyable investigating this holiday and simply stay at home. But hopefully, I don’t believe we have too many enemies upstairs who would want to stop me fulfilling what for the past few years has been a dream so Aussie ….. WE WILL SOON BE ON OUR WAY. Ken and David

Helen Thank you for your input and your information copied, printed and added to my 'Aussie 2013' folder. Again ... THANKS. Ken and David

Heidi Just as I said to Helen ... Many Thanks for your input and once again your words are being saved in the 'Aussie 2013' folder. Continue to eat the Golden Sunshine, pour it onto your cornflakes (so delicious with really cold milk), add it to your cooking and spread it so thick on your bread that as you eat it, it trickled down you arm. Whatever way just enjoy and remember how hard those little creatures worked for you. Again Heidi ... a big Thank You from Wales. Ken and David

>I want to call it Williamstown but feel this may not be the correct name - >sure someone will correct me - it had pelicans swimming in its bay and a >pub called after the Titanic). Williamstown is correct and The Titanic is only open Saturday nights (theatre restaurant). There is a ferry that goes from Southbank (city of Melb) that goes to 'willy' - I found it quite interesting and willy is a great place for history - if it had tried a bit harder back in the 1830's it might have been the main city instead of Melb. Glad you liked Cooks' Cottage as I'm a volunteer there as well as Puffing Billy.

Ken and David, great that you appear to have all the technicalities sorted and don't worry about being new to this site, it is a very friendly plac3e and, yes, I do get notfication of your replies. David, at that age and a driver on "blues and twos" should have no problem so all seems set fair. Maker of brews and bacon sarnies? Sounds good to me! I can sort of understand the insurance companies position as they are basically insuring against a known or perceived risk but it does still seem a little unfair to me. I really hope you get it together and have a brilliant trip. If you don't put up any other travel tips (and I sincerely hope you do) in the interim, please come back here and tell us how it went. fergy.

Sir Gaw I am glad I am not as senile as I often think I am and got Williamstown right. What a fantastic life you must have working on Puffing Billy and Cook's Cottage. Another great place occurred to my husband and I and again we don't know if we are accurate. Maybe you can help. We think we went to a pub called the Cricketers or possibly the Cricketers Arms. It could have been a hotel. My husband loves cricket; I am not interested in it at all. There was a match on New Zealand v Australia. Australia was losing and everyone was upset and then they fought back and won and the place just erupted. Even I got caught up in the atmosphere.

Irene, you might be thinking of the Cricketers Arms Hotel in Punt Road. Now thats a pub I havent been in for a while.

Hi Ken, Under the heading of "fauna" you might consider a visit to the Healesville Sanctuary whilst in Melbourne - we have taken overseas visitors there a couple of times. The sanctuary is a zoo specialising in Australian native animals. Healesville is about 40 miles (63kms) east of Melbourne in the Yarra Valley - a scenic valley well known for wineries and ballooning. The following is a link, if you would like to look at the sanctuary website: zoo.org.au/Healesville/About... Good luck with you planning, Glenda