{"id":23947,"date":"2025-11-08T16:41:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-08T15:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=23947"},"modified":"2025-11-08T16:43:54","modified_gmt":"2025-11-08T15:43:54","slug":"recap-november-1st-my-final-day-in-aus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/recap-november-1st-my-final-day-in-aus\/","title":{"rendered":"Recap – November 1st, my final day in Aus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before it all went crazy after I was informed that the first leg of my flight home had been cancelled, I’d had quite an enjoyable final day in Australia. I had plenty of time to return my hire car after leaving the wonderful Bellbrae Motel that I’d stayed in at Torquay so I thought that I’d give Corio Bay another look. I’d stayed over there several days previously in the glorified dosshouse known as the Corio Bay Motel. Corio Bay is actually part of the fine city of Geelong and I knew that that awful motel was far from representative of the city itself.<\/p>\n

Waze took me in via the northern end of the bay where the wharves are for the ferries to and from Tasmania, not the most attractive part of the city, but I was not to be disappointed. The road took me around to the northern end of The Esplanade where I parked up for a while to enjoy the full view of the bay, in which one of the ferries was moored offshore. The weather was rather dull but as time went on it brightened up and turned into bright sunshine.<\/p>\n

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As lunchtime approached I thought I’d drive towards the southern end of the bay to see if I could find somewhere to eat and everything changed. It was Saturday and everyone was out enjoying themselves and doing the same as me and it soon became obvious that parking was at a premium. I missed one plum spot right on the front which then went to the person behind me but I was fortunate to find a spot one road back, above a beautiful trim and well-kept area with large palm trees called Transvaal Square.<\/p>\n

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I left my car and walked down the grassy slope to the road running along the front. I thought that in view of how busy it was, I’d better forgo a walk along the front and back and look straight away for somewhere to eat. <\/p>\n

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I immediately spotted the Royal Geelong Yacht Club on the opposite side of the road which was advertising its cafe, so thought I’d give it a go. <\/p>\n

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The Yacht Club was on a short roadway heading down to the quayside and due to the fall of the road, the entrance onto its decked outdoor eating area was a few steps up. <\/p>\n

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By this time the weather was very pleasant and after going inside and ordering a Garden Salad with prawns and a drink and being given a tag with a table number I went back outside to choose a table and wait for my meal to arrive. And what a pleasure it turned out to be, just the ticket for my last full day in Australia, sitting there under a parasol in the sunshine and watching the world go by. <\/p>\n

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I thoroughly enjoyed it and was fortunate to be able to savour the moment with no knowledge of the mayhem that would later erupt due to my cancelled flight. That was to come later after a drive of a couple of hours or so to return my hire car, I’d found my way to the Ibis Budget Hotel at Melbourne airport and tried to check in on line for my flight home the following day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before it all went crazy after I was informed that the first leg of my flight home had been cancelled, I’d had quite an enjoyable final day in Australia. I had plenty of time to return my hire car after leaving the wonderful Bellbrae Motel that I’d stayed in at Torquay so I thought that … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23947"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23956,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23947\/revisions\/23956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}