Country Victoria IV: Mornington Peninsula

Portsea.JPG
Originally uploaded by BLP.

Monday morning we headed south from Melbourne for a tour down the Mornington Peninsula - a stretch of land which comprises the eastern shore of Port Philip Bay and the western short of Western Port Bay.

We stopped initially in Mornington, about an hour south of Melbourne, and had a look around, after which we drove along a series of coastal villages to Portsea, the last community along the peninsula. We had a quick walk along the ocean side of Portsea beach, where a dozen or two surfers were at work. We then backtracked to Sorrento, the elite community on the peninsula. Though quite pleasant and quite clearly not lacking in wealth, it appeared to us as solidly middle-class. We had lunch in an Italian restaurant, then walked down to the beach where one can catch a ferry across the Bay. We stuck our noses in a couple of stores, but our only purchase was a small bag of licorice (exclusively for Uta). By this point, the clouds started moving in, and we had to return our Ford before it turned into a pumpkin, so we began the journey home.

Going back, we opted to take another one of these Australian "highways". We started out moving at a nice pace, but within about 10 minutes we hit traffic. The cause of the traffic jam was the existence of a traffic circle, which seemed to me to be a completely absurd traffic feature to have along a roadway designed for high speed travel. This traffic circle was followed by several more, after which the highway just packed it up and deteriorated into a regular old road. So the highway ultimately took longer than the lonely beach road would have, and was far less picturesque. But we arrived back in South Yarra right on time.

We finished off our adventure with me trying to turn right at an intersection where such behavior is not allowed (and absolutely not tolerated by the folks behind me), which led to a roundabout tour of Prahran in an attempt to find safe passage back to Budget.