31 Jan/1 Feb: The Barwon River

The Barwon River starts in the Otway Ranges south east of Geelong, and meanders happily for 160km, seemingly with no desire to reach the sea at all. It wanders through Geelong barely 2km from the bay before taking itself off across the Bellarine Peninsula to finay enter Bass Strait at the prosaically named Barwon Heads. Thus Geelong gets itself a decently sized river without having to deal with the messy business of a river mouth. Geelong makes the most of it: the river is busy with fishermen, walkers, marathon runners, bicyclists, and teenagers performing feats of derring-do involving high banks, ropes, and gravity.

I rode my bicycle up and down the Barwon River as an antidote to working in a broom cupboard, and very nice it was too. 

There were bridges in all the places where bridges were needed.

And rowers to entertain when one was standing on said bridges.

Roger kept himself entertained by doing exciting things like ridding the car of all the rubbish that accumulates when travelling, and in the evening we both rode our bikes up and down the Barwon River again.

There were lots of signs so that no-one got lost.

It was all very river-ish and pretty.  Apart from the odd mosquito or seventy-three.

I saw a man on a bridge.  "I'll see you at home," I said, and went off to ride an extra 900m so I could clock up 200km for the month of January.

Apart from riding up  and down the river and working in a broom cupboard, life was really quite uneventful in the Barwon River Holiday Park.  The only excitement happened when a bird came to an electrifying death in a transformer nearby, causing us to be without power at precisely morning coffee o'clock.  While this could have been traumatic, Roger was more than equal to the challenge.

Shut the door! I'm in the bathroom boiling water and don't want to set off the fire alarm!

 

Oh, and there was a small matter of unfinished gelato business, but that's a story for another blog.