We had planned to start our holiday this day, but when I
read the wonderful reviews about staying at Ian’s B & B, I suggested that
we start out on Sunday and have an extra day of relaxation, especially for Dad
after working so hard in PNG. So, we had
a day with not much planned. Ian
suggested we go to a place called Queenscliff.
We decided to take him up on his suggestion after one stop we wanted to
make which we missed on Sunday.
I love indigenous culture, so our first stop was to the
Narana Aboriginal Cultural Centre. Ian
told us that there wasn't much to it, but I still wanted to go and see what
they had there. The entry went through
the gift shop and we spoke to a man there who played the didgeridoo for us. This one, though, had two openings and the
man called it a didgeri-two. J After that, he invited us to walk around the
centre. We saw emus, took a nature path
walk (which had signs about the plants there and what they are used for), threw
boomerangs (Dad got it to curve a little), looked around the art gallery (I
love indigenous art), looked around the room showing indigenous tools, food, etc. (which we think is used for tours) and finally bought something
at the gift shop – a bottle holder – I wanted
to support the centre as they rely totally on donations and sales. The centre does do tours, but only for
schools and large touring groups. So,
although we had a nice time there, it would have been nicer to be part of a
tour.
How they make a didgeridoo - including cutting the piece of wood in half, hollowing it out and gluing it back together
Bottle holder with aboriginal design we purchased
Showing how the bottle holder works (with a water bottle - usually it would be a wine bottle)
Queenscliff is a lovely little town on the ocean and Ian was
right – it was a nice place to visit. We
stopped at the Tourist Information Centre to find out what there was to see and
do in Queenscliff. The first thing we
decided to do was to walk to the Harbour precinct and walked along the pier. At the harbour is a 42 metre tower which we
climbed and were able to see 360 degree views of the town and harbour –
beautiful views. Along the harbour area
are a number of cafes and we decided to try out an iced chocolate at one of
them – yummy as always. J I love art and love to walk, so we walked to
Citizen’s Park to walk the Artist Trail.
These are a series of information boards highlighting the works of
celebrated artists and photographers who have visited the region and captured
the local landscape. The original copies
of many of these works are housed in collections in various galleries in
Australia and I would love to see them as the boards we saw were
beautiful. We continued the walk up to
the Black Lighthouse (one of only three in the world) and, after a lunch of
sausage rolls (yum!), we finished off our time in Queenscliff by walking up and
down their main street which had lots of old buildings (I love great
architecture).
Before heading back to the B & B, we made one more stop
in a little place called Point Lonsdale.
We took a walk along the beach and then made our way to the Point
Lonsdale Lighthouse. From there, along
with lovely views, we saw the ‘Spirit of Tasmania’ coming in (it’s a ferry
which sails between Melbourne and Tasmania) and also saw children taking
paddleboarding lessons.
Beach we walked along in Point Lonsdale on the way to the lighthouse
When we got back to the B & B, we were relaxing in the living room when we heard a ‘knocking’ at the patio door and were surprised to see a cockatoo ‘knocking’. Dad grabbed the camera and we took some pics. All of a sudden, there were seven of them. We talked with Ian later and he told us that he had been feeding them and that was why they had come at that time. He decided to stop feeding them some time ago, but they still returned in the hopes of him changing his mind.
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