After three days in Melbourne, we said that enough is enough, and went to the nearby town of Geelong (second largest city in Victoria), where we teamed up with Bev.
You remember Bev. She was with us on the trip to the bush:
On the last day of the Red Centre tour, Bev extended a very gracious invitation that we visit her in Geelong, when we were in town, and this was an invitation we decided to take up, and so it came to be that we spent one night at Bev's house, which is a rather large house and, since the death of her husband
("he just rolled off the bed in his sleep and killed himself!")
also rather empty.Bev is truly a very nice person, but also forgetful. I think that during our stay with her, that lasted roughly one day, we managed to hear every story she had to tell four times. Days later, Orit would burst for no apparent reason into an imitation of Bev and, in Bev's slightly-too-loud tone of voice would blurt out "Do you have eels in Israel? My father used to love fishing for eels, but you can't eat them until you boil all of their fat off!"
Possibly the most interesting of Bev's stories is how she came to be in Australia. You see, Bev didn't migrate here. She was born here. In fact, down her Australian ancestry, one can follow Bev's family tree to the first European settlers here. This is, of course, the place to remind everyone of an old Australian joke:
A guy comes to Australia, and when he arrives the customs officer asks him: "Do you have a criminal record?" So the guy replies: "I didn't realize you needed one anymore."
So, yes. One person in Bev's ancestry was a convict, brought to Australia from the UK. What people don't realize - at least I didn't, until I met Bev - is that you didn't reach Australia by killing anyone or doing any bank robberies. If you did anything that was, well, seriously criminal, British law would hang you without thinking twice. What you needed to do in order to win a free trip to Australia was something extraordinarily petty. In the case of Bev's forefather (and she gave us a copy of his report sheet, so we'll be able to show this wonderful bit of history to anyone who wants to see it), what he had to do in order to get to Australia was to "steal a brass weight". There you have it.
Another, related story that Bev told us that night is that the whole "move them to Australia" idea was based on a certain philosophical belief of the time, that "evil" is something like an infectious disease, and that only by banishing these evil people away from healthy civilization can crime be fought. The idea of shipping people off to Australia was abandoned more-or-less as soon as people in England realized the following odd fact: crime rates in Australia were much lower, by any standard, than the comparable figures on the British island.
Having heard all these anecdotes and quite a few more at least once and possibly more, and after each of us won at least one round of Gin-Rummy (which, like many other games, Bev knew under very different names than we), we decided to call it a night and head off to sleep.
When we woke up the next morning, we decided to offer Bev the same kind of hospitality she offered us: she invited us to stay the night with her; we invited her to stay the day with us. In particular, our plan was to do the Great Ocean Road that day, and that is certainly a trip worth joining in to, especially for Bev, who hasn't seen it for years and years, so she said yes.
Now, regarding the Great Ocean Road - As elsewhere, Australian's can not resist a bit of competition. In this case, they poise the GOR (Great Ocean Road) as the competitor to California's "Highway 1". As we, in our trip of the US's west coast, managed to not see Highway 1, we knew we wanted to see the GOR.
Here's my short version of what the GOR is like: it's long and winding, but ultimately worth seeing. Often, you need to step off the road in order to see the really beautiful parts of it. For example, just half an hour into the drive, Bev pointed out to us a small beach area that she used to come to, when she was in the area. We forgot the camera in the car that time, but I tell you, it was breathtaking.
Another time we decided to get off the road in order to take a closer look at one of the nearby lighthouses. This is what we saw:
And that, you understand, is just one stop out of many throughout a day-long trip. In fact, the trip was so long, I was afraid we'll run out of sun-light. As we didn't have any good maps of the area, as the roads were, as mentioned, winding, and as it takes ages to reach any form of civilization from where we were, heading out before sunset was, for me, a major factor, and we only barely made it. When we reached Geelong again, it was already night.
I can't show you any more pictures from this trip, because sadly we don't have any. It's not like we didn't take any. We photographed there like Japanese tourists, but for some unknown reason all these photos are gone. All that's left is a few anecdotes.
Telling these in chronological order, the first revolves around lunch. There is only one town that is actually on the middle of the GOR, and that is where we decided to have our lunch. Deciding and managing to pull this off, however, are two entirely different things. The source of the difficulty was that every place we came to was closed. I mean, yes, this was a medium-sized town, but in the off-season, they're really off. That should give you a hint regarding how far out of civilization we were over there.
Anecdote number two has to do with the culmination of the trip. The GOR's end, for all practical purposes, are the great stone statues of "The Twelve Apostles". Though the weather ("Excellent weather!") was terribly cold and windy that day, there was no mist and there were no clouds, so we could see the apostles in crystal clarity. There are now only eight of them. The rest have fallen off and have been eroded by water. However, as the number of the apostles drops, the size of the parking lot needed to maintain this attraction increases, and Bev was absolutely flabbergasted by all the renovations they put into the place.
By the way, if you try to find this place in Google Earth (the coordinates are 38.66S, 143.1E) you will not see much of the apostles or the parking lot, unless you know exactly what to look for, but zooming out a little you will be able to see some of the giant sandstorms that people living in Melbourne often refer to as "Excellent weather!". (I hope it holds.)
The last anecdote of the trip has to do with our way back. On the way back we passed through ranch areas in the neighborhood where Bev grew up (One of them, anyway. Bev's parents moved quite a bit around). Anyway, Bev suddenly remembered this one place where you can find this very particular ice-cream sort ("Australian owned, Australian made", which, in Australia, is a big deal), that she said was nothing like any ice-cream we've ever tasted, and that we must try. Her treat.
Here I must digress, and tell an old joke from Seinfeld, the TV series.
Jerry is trying to defend himself in some matter against Elaine, by saying "It was only a joke!", to which Elaine replies: "Every joke has a grain of truth in it." Now, Jerry says: "OK, listen to this: There was this guy once who always told about the amazing strawberry pie he ate once when he was in Bavaria. Now, on his death bed, still reminiscing about this strawberry pie, he decided to go seek for it. He manages to fly over to Germany (not a small feat, considering his medical problems), track down that one guest-house in the Black Forest where thirty years before he had a taste of that unforgettable strawberry pie, goes into the place and tells them 'I've been searching for this place for thirty years, and I've come to eat some of your strawberry pie.'
"To this they say: 'Sorry, we just ran out of pie.' and he says: 'Well, in that case I'll take the chocolate cake.'"
Seinfeld's point was, of course, that no one would ever do such a thing. There is no grain of truth in this story. Well, he evidently never met Bev.
It was roughly four p.m. when we finally made it out of the GOR and were back on faster roads. Given the time it took us to make it that far, I was afraid the drive back would also be long, but it wasn't. It was only an hour.
By this time, Bev was fairly excited. Ever since we passed the farmland where she grew up, she kept mentioning this special ice-cream, and there was no way to dissuade her from directing us into a small cluster of shops, one of which was an ice-cream parlor, and inviting us to this very special French vanilla that is the best ice-cream ever.
After some near-misses, we finally found the place. There was plenty of parking there, and at first we assumed the place was either closed for the season or closed down permanently, but we took a closer look and it was open. We walked inside, woke up the salesman, who thought his last customers of the day had already left, and then, with an air of importance, Bev asked if that one particular company still made their extra special French vanilla.
The salesman confirmed that, yes, that company was still around, and, yes, they still made that French vanilla, and, yes, it was still a very special French vanilla, and, yes, they do sell it in this store, but, no, they ran out of stock of it earlier today.
To which Bev said: "Well, I'll take a Magnum, then."
So much for grains of truth in jokes...
Anyway, after that Bev felt that she has to make up for this ice-cream invitation gone wrong, and invited us, instead, to one of her favorite restaurants in Geelong. This attempt was a great success, and I remember it as one of the better culinary experiences of the trip.
The restaurant was located right on the bay. Its walls were made of glass, so that you could look out into the bay all the time. The food was an all-you-can-eat sort, but unlike your run-of-the-mill all-you-can-eat, here they really had food worth eating, and in every single category, from appetizers and salads (both fruit and vegetable) to main courses and soups, to desserts and ice cream (yes, they had a self-operated soft-ice machine), and even drinks. All of it was very diverse. All of it was of high quality. All of it was stuffed into our mouths. We had a ball!