Ocean.

This morning the first sight that greeted my eyes.........was the ocean at Port Fairy:

 It has been a long drive to get here:

You can really appreciate why when I show you the view in the back of our car:

Although mercifully, this was the same view later in the day:

For some bizarre reason we thought a family road trip might be an easy option for a holiday, especially as we now have four children and were forced by necessity to buy a seven seater car. We have tried various Bali resorts (is there anywhere better than the Ayana at Jimbaran Bay?), a P & O Cruise (still trying to forget the debauched behaviour on deck during the Australia Day festivities), various European jaunts around France and Italy and two weeks in the UK in a motor home (friends of ours recommended it.....they are now divorced). The fact is that there is no easy option for a holiday when you have four children. And cars and boats are not necessarily easier than planes.

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I had no idea that when you cross Bass Strait on the Spirit of Tasmania a public address system wakes you on arrival at 5.45am so that you can be in your car and good to go at 6.30am. It's a tad early to be starting a day out and about in Melbourne, don't you think?Nor did I really register the hours involved sitting in your car waiting for the ship to board. Luckily though someone had given us the heads up about the food on the ship so we packed a delicious picnic and bottle of wine from the Hill Street Grocer before we left Hobart:

Look, David Jones in Melbourne has the same light that we bought from an antique shop years ago in deepest, darkest South Hobart:

Admittedly our's doesn't have her frock accentuated in gold. Tobes loves her regardless:

After a brief stint in Melbourne we drove along the glorious Great Ocean Road. Yesterday, there were myriad koalas in gum trees by the side of a narrow country road:

This photo makes it look like downtown Collins Street. And then we went to the 12 Apostles:

......there were helicopters and the track was like being on a busy city footpath. It was beautiful though in a way that only dramatic natural panoramas can be:

Our children were excited to be in the same place as on the front cover of our Lonely Planet guide:

Which of course we have been reading as we tend to rather slavishly depend on guide books when thrown into a new destination. Although we hadn't been in Port Fairy for an hour when amazingly I bumped into a girl I'd been to school with in Launceston. She was able to give us some insider tips re restaurants, pubs and the best place to buy treats to bribe your children with. 

I have also been reading this: 

Paris in Love by Eloisa James. I wasn't prepared to be so utterly beguiled by it as I have been, especially as it starts out after she has been diagnosed with cancer and that's what prompts her to move her family to Paris for a year, and then the discovery that the book is a series of Facebook posts which have morphed into a book. Regardless, this book is like a jewel box of tiny, individual stones which make up a priceless treasure chest. It is so real and honest and true and I really connected with it. On page 142 she writes,'.....I pack the children off to school and then think greedily about how many hours I have before they come home. I have come to the conclusion that silence and time are the most precious commodities'. I hear what she is saying.

I loved Paris in Love so much that I sought out another of Eloisa James' books not realising that when she says that she is a romance writer she really is a bodice ripping, no holes bared ROMANCE writer. I got my hands on this:

Yes, it's called Desperate Duchesses and no, I'm very sorry to say it is no match for Paris in Love. In fact, I'm struggling to reconcile that they were written by the same author.

Half of our family has gone fishing to attempt to catch our dinner:

I hope that they have some luck as I'm sick of having to buy it at the fish and chip shop:

Oh oh, the baby's awake so had better dash. Yet before I do thank you, thank you, thank you so much to the fabulous Faux Fuchsia who linked me to her phenomenally attractive blog in an attempt to boost traffic on mine. It worked! For twenty four hours I was so popular that I was positively giddy. And then I became consumed by our family.....in a car......in Victoria.  Thank you also to everybody who took the time to make a comment, it was like being in a parallel universe and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I wonder what will happen now?
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