Traveling to Melbourne

Friday, November 11


Friday morning we were off to the Ayers Rock airport for our flight to Melbourne. Melbourne is in the same time zone as Sydney, so we set our watches forward 1 ½ hours. We were anxious to get to out first stop: Macka’s Farm. We were to spend the night on a real, working dairy farm. Milking cows – woo hoo!

Macka’s is about a 3 hour drive from the Melbourn airport, so we stopped for a quick lunch at McDonald’s. For those of you keeping track, this was my first trip to a Micky D’s since I left the US. My how things have changed. The Golden Arches has gone healthy and, apparently, upmarket since my last visit.

Ladies and Gentlemen: McCafe.

We got to Macka’s a little after 7 PM and we were greeted by a couple of goats; Baby, an aging, but persistent farm dog; and Lee, a very cute guy who is working on the farm for the summer. Lee showed us to Lodge 2, a homey room with a queen size bed and a set of bunk beds. Guess where Doug slept?

We met Macka, the owner, and he said that we’d just missed the evening milking, but that he’d be doing it again in the morning between 6 and 8 AM. Then he suggested that we head out to the Great Ocean Road to see the Twelve Apostles before it got too dark, then head into Port Campbell for dinner.

We took his advice and headed out to the Twelve Apostles, a series of limestone cliffs that seem to defy gravity and the forces of the Indian Ocean. It was windy and cold and the site was thrilling. We stayed out as long as we could before it got too dark to see. We decided to come back the Twelve Apostles site in the morning to check it out in daylight.

I went to bed fairly early, as I was determined to get up early and at least see part of the milking. We couldn’t stay long at the farm, because we were planning to drive back to Melbourne via the Great Ocean Road which would take all day. Doug was not interested in joining me in my early adventure, so I told him I’d wake him around 8.