I flew to Victoria and arrived in Geelong on 17th February 2015 and flew back to Brisbane arriving home yesterday 26th February 2015.

While I had planned that I would write daily updates on here, I soon discovered that doing so from an iPad put it into the “too hard basket”.

I did not take many photos while I was away, but those I did, I could not get to upload.  After spending hours trying to resolve “Error uploading media item!” over and over again, I decided it was not worth the hassle.  I was supposed to be having a restful holiday, after all!

I did plenty of nice long walks in the cool Victorian climate.  Here in Queensland, if I go out for a walk, I get home in a lather of sweat!

I made good use of my Myki card which gave me very cheap public transport, so I went and visited various places on buses and trains.

On Saturday 21st February I caught a bus out to Bannockburn where I met Darryl John who owns a Triumph motorbike and whom I had met online through the Disciples Christian Motorcycle Club Facebook page.

On Sunday 22nd February I went with my mother and eldest sister to the Anglican church at Hamlyn Heights.  That church is named “St Albans” which is a very confusing thing since St Albans is also the name of a suburb on the opposite side of Geelong.

On Monday 23rd February I caught a bus, a train, and another bus to Grovedale where I visited Lindsay Smail and had lunch with them. On the way there, when I got off the train at Waurn Ponds station, there was a very dark looking severe thunderstorm approaching.

Shortly after I arrived at Lindsay’s place, the lightning flashed, the thunder crashed, and the rain came bucketting down. Although the storm seemed intense, it was brief and Lindsay’s rain gauge only measured a little over 2 mm of rain. I caught the Southern Cross train from Marshall to return to Geelong and Geelong was as far as it could go!  The storm had taken out the signalling between Werribee and Laverton and trains were replaced by buses for the next several hours.

On Tuesday 24th February, I went into town to go to the Village Cinemas in Ryrie Street to watch the movie called, “What We Did On Our Holiday.” It was a hilarious film and well worth seeing.

On Wednesday 25th February, I walked around to the home of my sister Trudi and spent a few hours with her, catching up.

When Trudi got on the phone to Wendy, I took the above picture.

On Thursday 26th February it was time to come back home, so after saying my goodbyes, I caught the 09:06 Route 45 bus to the station, the 09:48 train to Southern Cross, a Route 80 tram up Bourke Street to Elizabeth Street, a Route 59 tram out to the terminus at Airport West, and then the Route 479 bus out to the Melbourne Airport.  The whole trip on five different transport routes only cost $5.70 on my Myki card.

After flying to Brisbane it was so good to see Wendy waiting to pick me up.  At home it was great to see the kids again and to read to Ben that evening.

It was great to catch up with relatives and friends and to have a good rest while I was away, but it is also great to be back at home with the family.