Day 84 – Adelaide to Home! (Melbourne)

 

 

Adelaide is my Mum’s hometown, and this is one of the reasons it was so tempting to stop by on our way home. I have many wonderful memories of Christmases with my grandparents, and playing on Seacliff beach with my brother and parents. When google revealed there was a caravan park less than a kilometre from my Nana and Poppa’s old house, it was too good an opportunity to miss to engage in a bit of nostalgia. (It turns out the caravan park was there when I was a child, too, but back in those days I was less interested in the needs of mobile families).

By the time we negotiated peak hour Adelaide traffic last night (and not helped by a bad steer by the iPhone navigation), we might have been halfway to Melbourne if we had bypassed the South Australian capital.

But it was all worth it this morning as we ducked out of the beachfront caravan park onto the Seacliff shore. The beach and surrounding streets were narrower than I remembered, while the modern and architecturally attention-drawing beachview homes were unexpectedly conspicuous. However, the laidback feeling remained the same, while the tall pine trees lining the esplanade were just as I remembered.

Next stop down Nostalgia Lane was my grandparents house, and I was delighted to find it almost unchanged, right down to the poisonous oleander tree in the front garden, and the cracks in the front garden pavement where I used to watch ants trekking back and forth and occasionally show my mastery by redirecting them with hastily-constructed stick walls! I even think I spied the fruit trees down the side path, which were prolific producers a couple of decades ago. (I did knock on the front door before staring so nosily into the current owners’ garden and taking family snaps!)

The children enjoyed seeing their Nana’s old house, even if their mum’s reminiscing got a bit boring after a while!

By the time we filled the fuel tank and took a few more wrong turns out of Adelaide, we were well behind schedule for the big trek back to Melbourne. Yet the idea of breaking our journey just a few hours short of home didn’t make much sense, so we pushed on, having our first rain in a few days (it finally caught up with us, but was thankfully light and temporary).

At Tailem Bend we found a fantastic park and playground area, and across the road a bakery and source of caffeine.

Our only other daytime stop, apart from driver changes, was the supermarket in Nhill to stock up on fruit as we had none left thanks to the border crossing (as it turned out we didn’t even notice when we crossed the border, so maybe we could have taken our fruit and veg after all).

After nearly three months of travelling, when we nearly always cooked for ourselves and certainly avoided (or didn’t see!) fast-food outlets, we succumbed to the convenience if not culinary delights of McDonalds at Ballan, a bit over an hour before home.

And then, after negotiating the unpleasantly strong winds which were buffetting the outskirts of Melbourne, we were home. Our epic journey, involving over 17,000km of driving, some fabulous experiences together as a family, and the occasional moment of stress, was over.