Holiday - Summary

We thoroughly enjoyed our 17 day holiday around NSW & Victoria. Our total travel distance finished at 3,866km. Taemar was much closer in her guess as to what the total distance covered would amount to. It’s funny because Mike & Taemar separately were a little skeptical as to whether a driving holiday with a 3 year old was a good idea, but neither strongly expressed their doubts. Fortunately the trip exceeded both their expectations.

What was a surprise was that the actual driving was at least half the fun of the trip, where our initial feelings of trepidation were because we felt the driving component would be mostly pretty dull, plus a bored 3 year old would make it even tougher. In actual fact, because the majority of the roads and places had never been seen by either of us previously, it was actually interesting and the time didn’t drag at all. A huge bonus was how well Stephen took to the borrowed in-car DVD player. He watched a heap of movies, some, like Fireman Sam, many, many times, and he rarely complained or got upset. Plus, Stephen generally slept for an hour or two on the longer parts of the journey.

These were the main highlights:

• Anglesea to Apollo Bay – the best portion of the great ocean road. Absolutely beautiful and mouth-dropping natural beauty. The towns of Anglesea and Apollo Bay were also nice places to spend a few days, and the pizza place in Apollo Bay is awesome!
• Zoofari at Western Plains Zoo – we love zoo’s at the best of times, but sleeping in the zoo grounds and going on three behind the scenes tours with an incredibly knowledgeable and enthusiastic zookeeper, where we got to touch and feel some amazing animals – well we would have paid double for the pleasure, it was that good.
• Bendigo – not a focus for our trip initially, but a lovely surprise. It’s a beautiful historic town, and the talking tram tour was fantastic.
• Hallidays Point – the best part about this was spending some decent time with Sean, Karen, and all our friends, plus Sean & Karen’s great news.
• Tocumwal – specifically the Murray River. It was peaceful and beautiful. Made us think that perhaps a houseboat holiday might be for us after all.
• Warrnambool – although it was shockingly cold when we were there, it’s a nice town and the children’s playgrounds are phenomenal.

Other notable mentions:

• The 12 Apostles – actually I thought the Arch & London Bridge were more impressive. We didn’t see these natural wonders on their best day as the weather was pretty awful the day we saw these.
• Temora Aviation Museum – definitely worth the diversion, and it will be great to get back there for a flying weekend.
• Parkes Radio telescope – definitely worth a stop & when Stephen is older it will be worth a longer look.
• Merimbula, Barlings Beach – both were nice places to stay and spend a couple of days.
• Big4 Caravan Parks – we stayed mostly in cabins in the Big4 caravan park chain, and the quality was pretty consistent. The Apollo Bay & Dubbo cabins were a highlight, partly due to the inclusion of a spa in the cabin, and in the case of Apollo Bay the view was great, and being 50m to the beach was excellent. The bonus of staying in the parks is that there is most often a pool and a childrens playground, plus bbq facilities.

What wasn’t so great:

• Ballarat, Parkes, Temora – somehow these towns just didn’t feel nice to us. Ballarat we probably didn’t give much of a chance, but both Parkes & Temora actually felt pretty horrible.

Here are two maps showing our total journey, firstly from Dee Why, via Barlings Beach, Lakes Entrance, Anglesea, Apollo Bay, and onto Warrnambool. The 2nd is the return journey starting at Warrnambool, via Bendigo, Echuca, Tocumwal, Temora, Dubbo, Hallidays Point, and back to Dee Why.