Saturday 15 October: Rest day in St Kilda

It was nice not to have to be up at 6am and to be able to have a leisurely start to the day. However, this of course would not be as valued if it wasn’t in between days with early starts. There is still no word on the plan for getting to Tasmania.

We went to the nearby Acland Street as there are a number of shops open for lunch/ Brunch. I decided on the option of cherry tomatoes, feta, sour dough, quinoa and poached eggs, sounded very nice. It was actually very very average. The taste would have been improved a lot if the tomato was cooked or even warm. The coffee was nice.

Below are two views of Acland street one in the morning and one in the afternoon. There are trams coming and going on a regular basis so you have to keep an eye out when crossing the street.

There are numerous cake shops along this street, cake is clearly very popular here. There are three shops in a six shop block (ignore the random message at the top of the 3rd photo it must have come in as I was saving the photo and I didn’t realise until after I had posted it). After brunch we went back to the hotel where we ran into Jackie and Sandra.

The first photo is an example of the graffiti that is everywhere here.

The second photo is Sandra in the organelle dress and Jackie. We had a chat about the possible TDA options re Tasmania. Both Sandra and Jackie are from Vancouver. Jackie has done two TDA rides before. In 2019 the African ride from Cairo to Kenya (she left the day before we arrived). Also the second half of the Great American Road trip in 2021. Jackie used to have her own fashion shop and then retrained as a teacher and is now retired. Sandra has done part of a TDA ride called the Bamboo Road. Sandra trained as a lawyer but for the past few years has been a stay at home mum with her 3 children. Jackie and Sandra ride about the same pace as me so I frequently see them during the riding day.

The 3rd picture is Terry with his bike all boxed up heading off back home.

I am planning to head off next and get a massage and Brett is heading off to do the laundry. Just as I was about to leave Brett gets a message through What’sApp saying check your emails. The following email was received from TDA re the plans for getting to Tasmania.

Oh yay, no 12 hours on a ferry sitting around all day feeling sick. A flight instead of on the boat, how good is that 🕺💃🥂😀👍. A bit of a worry re when we can get our bikes over there. On a positive note even if we miss biking a couple of days we are still going to be seeing all the places. On the other hand a biking holiday without biking is not what we signed up for.

I headed off for a massage to hopefully get rid of some of kinks and knots from two weeks riding. I also had to print, sign and scan some documents. Hard to believe but the Hotel assures me that whilst they can print a document out for me they don’t have a scanner. They suggest I go to the post office where they are pretty sure they scan documents.

When I got to the Post Office there was a bit of a line but I thought it shouldn’t take that long. How wrong was I. One of the 3 tellers immediately headed off out the back as maybe time for her tea break. Then the two most frustrating customers ever took over twenty minutes to sort out their requirements.

The line of people also waiting I am sure felt like me and wanted to clap when after about 30 minutes they both finished. One of them was working through what appeared to be a very complicated issue. The other an elderly gentlemen wanted a box to send three books, he must have tried every box in the store with the tellers help before settling on one. Then he packed and re packed the books at the counter. Then the customs paper work had to be done and then address. Of course he had to shuffle through numerous pockets to find where he had put the address. Then there was the lengthy discussion on whether to pay to air or ship freight.

When I finally got to the front of the queue guess what? The Post Office doesn’t scan documents for people either! They were helpful in telling me where up the street I could get this done. As I was leaving the 3rd teller returned, if it was a tea break she had been on it was a long one! After scanning the document I headed off for a massage. It was painful at times but certainly worked on the knots and and I felt a lot better afterwards.

When I got back to the hotel I went up to the room and got Brett and we headed down stairs for the 3 pm riders meeting to discuss the plans for getting to Tasmania. We bumped into David Freeman who did the 2012 Trans Europa and Linda and Chris Willie. Linda and Chris were on the South American in 2015 and the 2016 Trans Oceania Auckland to Queenstown section. Unfortunately David is not doing the ride as has a bad back and was just here to drop off Linda and Chris. Also to say hello to riders he knew from previous rides.

In the afternoon we headed off for a walk to stretch our legs and see a bit more of St Kilda’s sights. In between heavy showers we saw an amazing wall built by the community to reflect their lives. I smiled at one bit where it said “bad spellers untie”, which I read as unite, I am sure was the intention and joke. A lot of work has gone into this wall. Lots of individual tiles and some of it is 3D.

We were walking along the top of Acland Street when it started to rain so we popped into a pub to wait it out. There was a model of a ship called the Lady St Kilda. The story was the governor of the time La Trobe in 1842 was sitting on board moored in the bay here. He looked over here and said that this part of Melbourne should be called St Kilda. Photo above of the Lady St Kilda and one of the rain. Luckily each time it rains it doesn’t last long so we were soon off again.

We walked along the beach front. I was very amused at one of the Marina’s to see smaller boats stacked in shelves. Apparently they have a special fork lift to put them in and get them out again. Looking out to sea you can see the rain clouds and another shower coming soon.

We walked around a bit longer and then decided to head back to Rococo for another one of those chilli margaritas. We had another serving of the Flatbread with sea salt and rosemary. Then we also some mushroom arancini balls and squid. After this we headed back to the hotel. In the second photo if you expand it you can see the boats stacked.

The first photo above is Brett, me, David Freeman and Linda and Chris Willie. The second is the dog man sculpture.