Dogmatic

I’m back at my office overlooking an extremely busy intersection here in Melbourne with bumper-to-bumper cars, trams, buses, police vehicles, pedestrians and all other creatures that make up the rat-race scurrying off to work and the dreaded curse of this thing known as Monday morning. Most of my co-workers are running late but with my daily 6am starts, I’ve been managing to get to work on time - all the time. Having said that, I am also reflecting on the past three days and a magical weekend I had with my girl down the beautiful coastline of Victoria, Australia. Everyday was an adventure and a fun, peaceful time away from all the hustle and bustle of city life. I can’t even remember when last I had a vacation and even though three days is a little on the short side, it was still a great chance to recoup and an opportunity to partake in the finer things of life.

I stayed over at her place on Thursday night so we could get a bright and early start to the next day as it is a few hours drive away. By the time we got ready and loaded the car, it was close to midday. After the obligatory wrong turns by yours truly - I have an uncanny knack of getting myself into some sort of bizarre auto-pilot mode and end up turning left when I should be turning right… we were on our way. Five minutes into the drive, Sam remembers that she left her prize lace-up Doc Martens back at the apartment. I offer to turn the car and go back ‘cos I know she loves those things but she was insisting we drive on. But, I couldn’t even imagine her without her Docs so we headed back!

With Docs now on-board, we began the journey again. Oh and this time, I remembered not to turn left, but turn right.

We took it in turns to command the iPod. Day one was her day so I let her plug in her iPod to the car and we listened to her soundtrack on our way to our destination. Which ain’t a bad thing, I dig a lot of her music and when she starts doing her irresistible little dance and bopping to Bikini Kill - it drives me wild! (GODDAMN!)

Most of the drive was extremely pleasant although we hit a massive bottleneck once we were driving through Geelong which added hours to our time.

We stayed at a place called ‘Butler’s Guest House in the small town of Birregurra. There were several rooms available to choose from on the website and when Sam was on the phone with the proprietor, she requested the room with the black bed-spread. (LMAO!) Which isn’t too hard to understand as the pair of us rocked up looking like we’d just come back from a rocking gig!

The guest house was pretty amazing and a little on the creepy side. But for a pair of droogs like us, creepy is good! The guest house used to be a former private hospital and I commented to Sam, “Whoa! This is cool! Imagine how many people have died in here!” The place also had an uncanny resemblance to the hotel in ‘The Shining’ so for the next while, yours truly was doing his best “Here’s Johnny!” impersonation whilst we trekked through the halls of the house.

The (awesome) lunatic asylum-looking doors!

The town of Birregurra was incredibly tranquil and as quiet as can be. We went for a stroll through the town after we settled in to get our bearings and to assess where everything was. Not that there was much here… the place is tiny but it was very central to some of the spots along the coast that we wanted to check out.

This sign proved to be a godsend ‘cos at least we now knew which direction to head

The streets of Birregurra

I’m cheekily posing whilst Sam is busy cleaning up spilt lemonade! A minute in and we’re already destroying the place!

After settling in, we decided to drive about 40kms down to Lorne. Again, it was a pleasant scenic drive made all the more special by the girl by my side. Once at Lorne, I was overwhelmed with an amazing dose of deja vu as I saw a spot that my parents had taken me as a kid some 30 years ago(!) It was a freaky feeling as I remembered so much of that past day in an instant.

We strolled through the main street of Lorne and checked out some of the eateries as we wanted to grab some dinner for the night. Whilst on our quest, we noticed some amazing looking parked choppers that were as much works of art as freaky rides. Naturally, we took some pics and marveled at the sheer engineering brilliance of these road-hogs! I pleaded with Sam to get on one so I could take a pic but thoughts of accidentally knocking one down and setting of a domino-like chain-reaction ran through our minds… so that idea was quickly exorcised!

You can see both our reflections in the chrome if you look close enough!

It was getting to be dinner time so we perused what was on offer along the Lorne strip. We finally settled on this tiny pizza place called ‘Pizza Pizza’. Whilst they were small, the pizzas were damn good so we bought ourselves a pizza and had a pleasant meal by one of the rivers behind the camping ground. (Damn good pizza folks!)

We then headed back to Birregurra and went straight to bed. It was a long and exhausting day and we were both a little frazzled. We fired up my Macbook and watched ‘True Romance’. A fave film for both of us and one we hadn’t seen for a while.

Day 1 came to a close and we pretty much had the entire guest house to ourselves. Fortunately for us, there was no lunatic-induced Jack Nicholson chopping down our door with an axe!

Day 2: coming soon…