Week 5 – Week ending 10 August 2008 – Hastings – VictoriaAug 10, 2008
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| The day is fine and sunny and quite comfortable. We need to head up to Frankston again today. We have to collect the annex for the caravan and pay the next year’s rego on the 4WD. NZ requirements are that the vehicle must hold Australian rego for the next 12 months. As ours expires on 10 August, we need to go and pay this. We have been without our new credit cards, but they have arrived today…thank god. We wander about the shops and head back home to take the dogs for a walk. On Tuesday we have a lazy morning at home then head down to the Navy base to catch up with Steeley. Steeley is the caravan whizz, so we get him updated with our first caravan trip. The man seems to come up with more good advice and ideas each time we talk to him. After spending some time there with Wayne we leave and drive up to the Devils Bend Golf Course. It is a great afternoon for a walk, the full sun is out and it is quite warm at 14 degrees! The course is saturated and needs a bit of work. It was a lovely afternoon though. Wayne has headed up to Anne’s place, so we are home alone. We are pretty busy this Wednesday, we have to get the 4WD and van as clean as possible to meet NZ import requirements. Basically this means no signs of mud and dirt. Another tip we had was the radiator needs to be free from bugs. We had heard of vehicles arriving in NZ and not meeting MAF requirements due to the cleanliness of the vehicle. The vehicle then needed to be transported to someone who would clean it so it would meet MAF approval. So, Gary spends the morning cleaning the car and van as best he can. We have the vehicles booked in with a detailer on Thursday. He will do up under the vehicles, where it is impossible for us to do here. Basically after this is done we have a lazy afternoon. Gary watches a DVD while I get my hair done. We take the dogs down to the Marina for a walk, but Logan is a bit sore in the front leg, so we keep it short. While on the Marina we notice all the pelicans over at the boat ramp. We wander over there where an old fella is cleaning his catch. The pelicans are going nuts as he is throwing fish scraps to them. We look over and see Solomon the seal sitting at the waters edge looking for a feed. I get heaps of photos of him, he is literally one metre from us. We have a good chat to the old fella who is cleaning his catch. What an interesting bloke. We get heaps of info about where to travel to and places to see once we return to Australia. We are up very early this Thursday morning and it is 3.2 degrees. We have to hook up the van and get to Mornington (about 11km from Hastings) by 8am. We have an early appointment with the car detailer to get the final cleaning done. We make good time, but when we arrive we see his shed is situated on an incline. Gary has to reverse the van up the incline, into a shed, then turn it into an angled bay. What an effort. He did it unbelievably. We spy this old Falcon Futura in the carpark and get talking to the owner of the business who also owns the Falcon. It is a 1963 XL Falcon Futura in original condition (except for the hubcabs). He is a Ford nut. His mate saw this car for sale in Red Hill and phoned him with the contact details. He was saying he phoned the number for two months, no answer, eventually he phoned at 8.30 one night and an old bloke answered. The old bloke asked how he knew the car was for sale and he said my mate saw it and phoned me. The old bloke said “I only had it out the front for one hour with the for sale sign on it”! He bought it for $6,800.00. It has a genuine 73,000 miles on it. The old bloke was the original owner. He passed over all the service history as well. The business owner that bought it drives it to work and about, he uses it and enjoys it. He has only buffed up the paint job and taken off the original wheel covers. He realized how rare and valuable they are. He has recently been offered $30,000 for it, but declined. The car and van are finished and we are off to the Port of Melbourne to leave the car and van to go on the Trans Future 7 – car carrying ship. We are only allowed to go onto the port between the hours of 7am and 2pm. We arrive at 10.45am. Thankfully we have our Maritime Security passes (that we got when driving the cab – to go onto Hay Point and Dalrymple Bay Terminal). We are stopped at security and produce the passes, he is curious as to how two individuals have these passes. Anyway, if we didn’t have these, we would have had to pay $100 just to drive into the port. The irony of paying the $100 is when we got the Maritime Security passes in Mackay, we had criminal checks and ASIO checks done (obviously to see that we aren’t terrorists). Yet, we could have coughed up $100 and driven straight into the Port!, we could have been anyone, carrying anything! We are directed to drive to another check point and we queue behind a truck. Then we are told the wharfies are on lunch, 50 minutes later, we proceed through the check point only to be told to wait in a spot until more wharfies come along another 15 minutes later. We follow them and park the car and van. There must be eight Jayco caravans and four Jayco motorhomes parked up. They are all going to Auckland on the same ship. While we were waiting for the wharfies to finish lunch we watched truck after truck leaving with European cars loaded on them. There must be thousands of new cars parked on the dock. Also numerous Japanese imports. We also see John Deere machinery leaving on backs of trucks. It is incredible and such an eye opener. The Trans Future 7 hasn’t even docked, yet they assure us it will leave on time on the 8th August as scheduled. We’ll see. Security give as a lift back the main security gate and we set off on foot. We leave the port at 12.45pm. We walk the 6km into the City and have some lunch and a bit of a wander around. We board the 3pm train to Hastings and get in around 4.40pm. Luckily I can sleep on most forms of transport, so I get a bit of shut eye. We eventually get home after a long, interesting day. We were discussing how we never seem to do things “the easy way”. I awoke after a restless nights sleep. The Vet phoned to tell us the dogs blood tests came back negative (which is good news), but there is a problem with collecting the paperwork. I tossed and turned worrying about it. We only have a small window of opportunity to have all paperwork presented to the pet carrier and the Vet is approximately 50km from the pet carrier, and we don’t have a car. First things first, we board the train from Hastings to Crib Point Station and walk to the HMAS Cerberus, get our visitors passes and catch up with Wayne. HMAS Cerberus is having “ceremonial divisions” today. All the Navy personnel on base and visiting RAAF and Army personnel must done winter uniforms (Black ones), complete with any service medals. There are approximately 2000 personnel on parade. Today the newly appointed Chief of the Navy (CN) is visiting. It is a ceremonial occasion; the Captain of HMAS Cerberus has invited the Chief of Navy to visit the base. The Chiefs walk around and inspect the dress of all men and women on parade. HMAS Cerberus has a mascot dog, named Roxy. Roxy is 13 years of age and actually holds the rank of Leading Seaman. She is wearing a jacket with the Bosuns emblem and continuous service chevrons (3 chevrons, one chevron = 4 years of service) and her blue and white Leading Seamans cape. The CN even inspects Roxy! The Chaplain offers a prayer and hands over to the Chief of the Navy. The CN presents medals to about six Navy personnel. The Navy band plays, then all the 2000 personnel (broken down into groups) march past the CN, eyes right and the officers salute him. Other invited guests are the Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police and the Acting Superintendant of Police, as well as former defence personnel, most of them are older people. Invited guests are seated in comfy chairs and provided blankets. Other guests like ourselves sit on temporary aluminium seating. It is freezing. The sun is partly out, but a wind picks up and we sit through the 1 ½ hours shaking with cold. It is a great ceremony to watch, extremely formal and steeped with history. Quite a bit of it was lost on us, but Wayne and Craig answered all our questions. We get a phone call when we get home from the pet carrying service and thankfully everything has been resolved with regard to the paperwork. It is a huge relief. We are tying up the loose ends of things, as it is only 5 days until we leave the country for about a year. Craig is back with us for the weekend and Anne, Harley, Mitchell and Sassy have arrived. We have a full house tonight and sit down for a catch up on each others week. Saturday is a very quiet day. We all laze around only going out to take the dogs down to the park for a walk. Sunday is raining and cold, a change is coming through that will bring snow to low levels, hails and black ice. We ventured out to the Bittern markets this morning. It was pouring rain and not too many stall holders were there. We couldn’t find what we were after so we headed back home via the Industrial side of Hastings. We drove over and looked at the Bluescope and Esso plants. The afternoon is spent watching the Olympics coverage and the DVD Wild Hogs. There is plenty of rain, lightning and thunder. We get some small hail tonight. Today snow has fallen on Mt Dandenong, the ski fields and many suburbs that haven’t seen snow for twenty years. |
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