Melbourne's turn again

Following the success of starting our last trip at 0730, this time we tried for 0700 and overachieved, heading away at 0655 on 7/12.  There was a little more traffic than last time with a few very slow caravans causing some annoyance.  The weather was also manky until about Orbost (~170km).  However, as a strategy it seems to work well.

The most interesting sighting was fishing Santa, sitting on the railing on the Avon River bridge just West of Stratford.  It seems this is an annual event as our daughter reports seeing it last year.

The traffic got rather heavy entering the Domain tunnel - the presence of an ambulance with lights and siren suggesting a stupid had happened towards the West Gate bridge.  Not a biggie.

After a very pleasant get together we the sunset was pretty good.


As we were heading to bed, we had an issue arise with the louvres on our Winter garden which we had opened to let the breeze off the Bay in.  (The day had been pretty tropical.)  They started to close and uttered a groan so Frances stopped them closing. That process ended with them fully open so we tried again.  This time they groaned and then stopped themselves about 80% open.  I called the concierge who advised that all she knew was to do nothing but talk to the day guy Julian (for whom she would leave a message).  

It was pretty warm still so for the first time we turned on the AC, programming it to turn off after 3 hours.  Which worked apparently as it is off on 8/12 .

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