We had spent our first and very comfortable night in David and Kay’s guest room in their mud-brick self built mansion. There had been a briefly uncomfortable feeling as Buddy, their dog, had peered longingly at us through our French…

Today we left our self-catering cottage in Metung to head for our friends, David and Kay, in Darnum, near Warragul, Victoria. This is a stepping stone on our way back towards Melbourne where we will catch our flight to New…

Today we bad farewell to Francine’s brother and sister-in-law, with the requisite weepy eyes, of course, and headed for Metung on the south coast, where we have a self-catering chalet booked for the night.Regrettably our old weather jinx was in…

Francine has been digging around in a pamphlet containing walks in the vicinity of Beechworth and has settled on one taking in Ingram’s Rock, where wild flowers are mentioned. The written route of the walk is actually a circular walk…

In February this year, we embarked on an Explore trip a trip to Namibia. On arrival at Heathrow airport, I had discovered that I’d left our joint camera charger at home. 2-week photographic trip and no charger. Brilliant, Franco! This…

Our last trip to Australia was in 2001. That was a 4-week trip during which time we were based in Sydney, with Francine’s brother Michel. Our highlight, though, was a 2-week camping trip using his pop-up camper trailer. One place…

A quiet day. Francine had a hankering to visit Beechworth cemetery, where the main attraction seems to be a pair of Chinese Burning Towers. We were accosted by a local who wondered if we had “any rellies” buried in there.…

Michel had suggested Sunday lunch on the deck of Gapsted Winery. Their website does a much more comprehensive job of explaining what’s what than I could here, so go look. Suffice to say that they make “cool climate” wines in…

Time to be escorted again. In Stanley, at about 750m elevation, we are already in the high country but Michel had designs to take us up into the really high country. We were heading over 1500m to Mount Buffalo. The…

For the last couple of days we have at last been joined in Stanley by Francine’s sister-in-law, Sandrine, who has hitherto been otherwise occupied in Sydney. We’ve had a hoot re-educating her to drink wine instead of fermented tea which…