Day 46 - Saturday 20 Feb

My god.
That was a windy ol night.
The house creaked and groaned.
There were bangs and protests from both tree and building alike.

I woke several times, certain that someone was trying to wrench open the patio doors that led from four feet from where I lay, out onto the veranda that seemed to be getting power washed.

I got up and walked out onto the other part of the veranda. The part that looks down to the ocean, over a couple of other houses. You can’t see the houses in the day time. It’s only at night when the lights from their rooms show through all the woodwork.

Not a light was lit, it was two in the morning and the wind was howling through the tree canopy.

God, what a lonely, forlorn place this can be.

I remembered a quote I’d never heard until I started writing this.

ROBERT FROST:
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
And so it does.
I climbed into bed, the next thing I heard was Margaret snoring.
See.

Geelong. Another fine link. I’d read about this town when I was surfing the net at home. The town had suffered through shifting demography like a lot of other towns on this earth of ours.
Tourism was to be its saviour. It badly needed something to draw visitors to spend their dollar.
They had a waterfront location. They had a good climate. They had vision.

They also had a run down pier, and old warehouses used by the wool trade to store and ship their wares.

These had long since gone into a state of disrepair, so the city fathers revamped the whole area, and turned things around.

While we were there, it was always part of the plan to visit on the way back to Melbourne, we were treated to the sight of a wee penguin swimming in the water next to the pier. Ducking for the wee fish that were there in abundance. Eating his/her fill, and then off to sunbathe and preen no doubt. Just like the Yellow Eyed cousins of his/her we saw in New Zealand.

Such a treat, and the wee thing was totally oblivious to us gawping at him/her from behind our sun glasses.

We continued our trip back to Nicola and Trevor’s.

Once we were on the freeway I sat the cruise control at 95 and cruised peacefully all the way for the 60 or so kilometres we were on that section.
The wee car had cruise control, aircon and all sorts but it didn’t have electric windows. Bizarre or what?

We found our way back no problem. It was a bit disappointing really, not having to growl at Margaret for not having us in the right place at the right time.

It was nice to be back.

We prattled on and on about the trip, I think I saw Trevor looking at a book called “How to commit suicide without letting on”, and other stories.

After leaving the filthy, really filthy wee car back, I invited the young lad to check it. He was surprised to find a gray car, rather than the black one he gave us.

He mentioned something about a ploughed field but I missed the first part. Smiling benignly I left to get in Trevor’s car for the short journey home.