Hepburn Springs and hiking

Christine put together a whole surprise weekend getaway for Australia Day. We went up to Hepburn Springs, apparently the mineral springs/spa capitol of Australia. The drive up there reminded me quite a bit of Arizona, rolling hills and cattle and bone dry grasslands, with the occasional patch of trees. Melbourne has a bit more vegetation, like this picture below is from a park we walked around in near Kew... We're still learning all the names of the trees. 

The high point of Hepburn Springs is the Hepburn Bathhouse, a government facility that's been open for many decades but recently had a major overhaul. The website is here http://www.hepburnbathhouse.com/ The architecture of it is breath taking and I recommend checking out some of the pictures. Christine signed up for the full boat maximum package with aromatherapy steam room, mineral hydro massage, salt water floating pool, monsoon showers, etc. When they were walking us around they explained that it was largely on an honor system, but two hours (our package) is really quite a long time to be at a spa, about the most one could handle. I figured they hadn't met Christine before. We probably stayed for about 2 1/2 hours. 

When we first rolled into town we ate at A Perfect Drop, a wine bar with tapas. There were a lot of places in town but I have to think that we just stumbled upon the best place off the bat. We had olives and the cheese and leek fritters with spicy sweet and sour saffron sauce. I notice Christine gives a hearty enthusiastic "Yum." when she tastes something she likes. Extremely good brings out the Opera Yum, a drawn out falsetto "Yuuuuumm!". The fritters got both the regular Yum and the Opera Yum, so we ended up going back for dinner to the same place.  

We did some hiking (or bush walking or tramping) around some of the springs, which was nice. We saw The Blowhole, a hole in a rock that a river passes through and when the river gets bigger than the hole the results are spectacular. When we were there it was a dry riverbed. However, when we were driving back into town there were some Wallabys/Kangaroos that were jumping ahead of our car down the road. Christine tried to run them down with the rental car (a Toyota Corolla Seca that she's named Gunther and says she'd marry if she hadn't already met me) but this is about as close as we got with the camera: 

To kill some time we also went to the Chocolate Mill (Christine: "Houston we have a problem- there's a tourist town without a chocolate factory"). Their story was actually quite inspiring. We got to talk with Jennifer, the owner, for a bit. Very friendly and obviously passionate about what she does. They lived on the property for 20 months together without electricity and meeting deadlines by putting in 14 hour days every day for six weeks. We'd be flattering ourselves to say that we could relate and it definitely puts our immigration saga in perspective. We asked what impact it had on their relationship and she said something to the effect that there was one day that was their darkest moment, but otherwise it was a bonding experience. She said that what helped the most was having her own thing to work on, that both people were not always working on the same thing. She said it all very eloquently so I regret not remembering her exact words... but I was caught in a sugar spiral after taking down one of their dark hot chocolate drinks, the remants of which are below. Note the spoon scrape marks. 

Spa Country Getaway

Last weekend, Tom, our Kiwi-expat friend, Laura, the newish-and-yet-to-be-named-Barcelona-red-Prius and I went up to Hepburn Springs and Daylesford, about 90 minutes north of here. You may recall we visited the same area last January.

Of course, we got in on the full floaty-pool spa package and ate at the Perfect Drop again. We were excited because it was "no menus" day...you just free associate your food dreams, allergies and phobias to the proprietor, let them know how much you want to spend and they deliver a series of mind-blowing beverages and tapas, like cheesy fritters and sauce-dripping meatballs. We played Mama Mia (a pizza making card game), nestled up in giant leather chairs by the fire all afternoon. I was in charge of log stoking, which made me feel a great sense of both responsibility and purpose that friends and family are starting to question as being missing in my life.

Daylesford town center was shut down in the morning for the memorial events. Everyone was gathered around the cenotaph for speeches, military band music and so on for an hour or two. Australians take this stuff seriously- This year over 40,000 people showed up to the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance... at sunrise!

Since it was Anzac Biscuit Weekend, we were fortunate to find a room at all...Tom got the very last one (for all three of us to share) in a small town a half hour east, called Trentham. "Hotel" often means, simply, "bar, or pub", here. Sometimes it's a place of lodging. This one, was, oh happy day, both. However, they were quite strict about where you could go with your alcahol and liqour (sic).

We blew up an air mattress and settled into our new home. The room was about 15% bigger than the bed itself. Someone would have to get on the bed if you wanted to make space to open the door. A little red wine in a teacup was good to get the night started.

It was a little intimidating to venture out to the bar / restaurant area, where many of the locals had been drinking since their Anzac Day Pancake Breakfast that morning. Below in the upper left is Bazza; after he sat with us, the bartender's wife told us to look at the picture on the wall above us. Sure enough, it was Bazza on a motorbike, driving through a giant fireball. Turns out he was a daredevil stuntman (that specific event was a fundraiser for the local fire brigade).

Laura is very social and was quickly welcomed back-stage to tend bar. Part way through the night, the drinks became free because the cash register got stuck. I tried to resist the urge to pinch (that means pillage, plunder, pilfer, you get the idea) a place mat.

We all felt very welcomed by the community and bartender/owner insisted on shots all around, wherein we were introduced to something called Grayva, a Scotch Whiskey Liquor.

The next day, we reckoned we understood a little bit of how Wake In Fright's John Grant felt, Outback in the town of Yabba after his warm welcome by the locals. This is one of the original Ozploitation movies from the 70's. It captures (and stereotypes?) what goes down in rural Australian bars.

Trailer for those of you not receiving this by email, here's the video trailer:

We got the car packed up and made our way to some hiking and wilderness areas. This year, we actually saw a waterfall! The drought has pretty much dried up all the smaller waterways around Victoria. And how could we not be thrilled to see a life sized resin elephant strapped to a trailer on the way home? It was an unprecedented weekend.