Roadtrip Gippsland, Final (fourth) Day!
Previous days of this trip in grey, you can see we've pretty thoroughly crisscrossed Gippsland!
Sunday morning we woke up to a pleasant sunny morning in our bnb in Golden Beach. First order of business was going down to the beach itself, just over the natural sand berm that is right along the coast for the whole coast in this area. On the beach side the beach stretched as far as the eye could see in both directions. Golden Beach is near the southern end of "90 mile beach," the extensive straight line of beach thats on the giant sand bar separating the "Gippsland Lakes" from the sea. First order of business was what you may have gathered is one of dad's favorite things: he went for a swim in the ocean.
We then drove about five minutes down the beach to the site of a shipwreck in 1878. The steel ribs of this ship still protrude from the sand like the giant ribcage of some enormous beast (named Traralgon??). We walked along the beach here and collected some very fine shells.
From thence we drove down the coast to the town of Seaspray and then headed inland to where my good friend Billie and her boyfriend live (Willung on the above map). It was kind of in the middle of rural Gippsland and our route there was along minor roads with lots of turns. I kind of like having an excuse to get way off the beaten track. We just barely caught Billie's boyfriend (Justin) as he was just leaving as we arrived. Then we had lunch with Billie (with primarily the sandwich fixings we'd brought). Her left arm was in a sling because she had smashed her finger in an accident at work on Wednesday or Thursday. She had sent me a picture of the x-ray, it looked like the end of one of her fingers was literally smashed. Something about someone commencing to move a truck when she hadn't finished securing the load in back or something. She works with her boyfriend on a team that welds together giant pipes for pipelines.
After lunch Billie gave us a tour around the 500 acre farm in her 4x4. That was fun, as I knew it would be, because she knows nearly all the plants, which my mom always likes to know about, and had many stories about animals she'd seen here or there. When it came to the cows she lovingly recounted stories about at least a dozen of them (as mom would later say, "when she offered to show us the cows I didn't realize that they were basically her children").
Previously I think my parents had only met Billie once very briefly in like 2016 or 2017, and due to their mutual interest in plants and both being awesome I always knew she and my mom would get along really well, so I was happy to finally get them together.
I had been trying to make plans with Billie's twin sister Lek as well, both because Lek also lives near a cool place for a walk ("the Channels") and I kinda want to sohw off her rad house (a shed which she's insulated and made nice and replaced one whole wall with glass looking out to a magnificent view), and Lek herself is of course also rad. We'd tried making plans when we passed through this area Thursday but then they fell through, and the plan even this morning was to meet with Lek and Billie and Lek's place but the plans keep changing and Billie didn't feel up to leaving her property and now by the time we finished seeing the property and hanging out with her it was almost 15:00 and there wasn't really time to see Lek. Lek was understanding though. And then we headed off.
It was only while we were on route west that we decided to take the ferry this time instead of going back through the city. I double checked that we could catch it in time -- we could at this point arrive at 18:21, in time for the last ferry of the day (at 19:00). I booked a ticket for the ferry online lest we arrive and be unable to get on. Now we were committed!
Buying a ticket proved very unnecessary as the ferry seemed to be at less than a quarter capacity, maybe more like 15%. It was a lovely sunny and warm evening and we spent the trip up on deck in the fresh air, it was very pleasant.
On the other side in Queenscliff we got fish and chips at a fish-and-chips-shop that advertised itself as having won best such shop in Australia several different years. We also ordered an "asian slaw" salad in lieu of chips, but they had no forks of any kind to provide so we just had to take it home. When I tried to eat it the next day I found it very bland until I added hoisin sauce and lime juice.
Anyway, then we continued on our way home. My housemate Trent had asked multiple times what time we expected to get home, I suspect so we wouldn't catch him in flagrante delicto with his new girlfriend (who is 19 while he's 28 or 29, not that I'm judging), but because I'm a jerk I was pointedly vague about when we'd arrive. If he'd been bold enough to state specifically why he wanted to know I'd have given him a straighter answer but he had asked "when will you be back? Just so I can get the car out of the driveway" so I'd written back "On our way. If it makes you anxious you can just move the car now if you're not going out again." Be needlessly devious about your motives, get a needlessly devious response.
Anyway we arrived home without incident and without walking in on anything scandalous. The end!
view from the car deck as we were leaving the dock