We left Port Fairy on Friday the 1st of Feb, spent the night in Keith SA and are spending two nights in the Adelaide Hills with my Recipezaar friend Amanda and husband Will. Tomorrow we'll make our way to Streaky Bay arriving on Feb 10th. We are going to stay at Port Germain, then Cowell on the way and do a bit of fishing.! Today was spent taking a drive through the hills to Maggie Beer's farm for lunch and tonight we are off to a local Indian restaurant.
Hanging Rock Winery
Our 6 weeks in Vic was really busy-we managed to get to Traralgon, Geelong, Ballarat, Portland and Woodend to visit a lot of friends and family but found we ran out of time to see everyone we wanted to.
Oil Rig in the Portland Harbour
Russ caught some sort of virus which laid him low (more like absolutely flat-out) for 2 1/2 weeks. He was as sick as I've ever seen him-unable to do anything for most of the time. I also enjoyed doing quite a few breakfasts at the Merrijig with Kirstyn (to let Ryan sleep in) and we seemed to have endless running around to do with the boat, van and ute to get them all really to travel again.
Last Wednesday, we took the van in to have the awning replaced and a routine service done. It ended up being a huge service with lots needing done to brakes and wheel bearings! Russ forgot to release the hand brake leaving Maryborough and it stayed on until Noosa and was apparently burned out. I have to say it feels nice now though to know it's all done. For some reason our bearings were odd too and needed replacing. The guy who did the service pumped our tyres up "to where they should be" and when I started driving this morning, I felt like I was towing a bouncing ball behind me. We stopped and let them down the where we think they "should be"! Russ hadn't told me what the mechanic had done,l but I could feel it straight away.
The new awning and roller are pretty neat! The van looks really clean and tidy again. We also had the boat motor serviced and that should be a bit easier to start which will be good as Russ's right arm is still causing him a bit of bother-I suspect it'll never be the same again.
We had a huge clean out of the van and took a lot of stuff to the tip, op shop and put stuff back under the house. The house and stuff under it look OK, but lucky we'd be warned by the tennants that the back garden was a bit of a jungle ;-) It wouldn't take too long to rip into gear though and I'm not going to worry myself about it while we travel.
We've eaten out more in the last 6 weeks than we've eaten out in our lives, but last Thursday night Kirstyn and her mum Jill, Russ and I went to the Merrijig for a very special dinner. Ryan does two degustation menus and let us pick the dishes we wanted to eat from both to make the best meal I have ever eaten in a restaurant. We started with chilled white gazpacho then had a soft shelled crab with crab taboulleh, braised pork with crayfish and jammon, duck breast and duck pie on fig puree, lamb cooked two ways with whipped Persian fetta, fennel puree and spinach, a cheese platter and belgian chocolate pudding. It was unbelievably good. The Age were in the restaurant a couple of weeks ago to do a review. The photographer will be there Sunday, so check out Epicure for the results in the next week or so.
I cried leaving Port Fairy on Friday morning, but I'm looking forward to Mick being home in WA next week, our new baby in April, and seeing Dan and Verity, Todd, Leah and Blair.
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