On the road again..............Part 1 .....the Great Ocean road..............

 I was very pleased to finally catchup on blog posts in my last report, but now I am 3 weeks behind already.....it takes a lot of time to sort the photos and post an update of newsfromjude. 

After having the van in the shed for almost 3 months it was time to head off again. After a few busy weeks at work, the office staff told Barry that we should go, so we packed up expecting to be away for up to 3 weeks. But plans are made to be changed, and circumstances altered on the way.

We decided to head into Victoria and follow the Great Ocean Road along the coast and get close to Melbourne and catchup with the family there.

We left Bordertown on a lovely sunny day, and enjoyed the brilliant yellow of canola crops interspersed with the green paddocks.

                              

                                              We crossed the border into Victoria................

................and then to Kaniva...........I just love the "sheep" they have all over the town......

                              

   .....and soon after Kaniva we turned south and had a quick stop at the Lake at Edenhope............it was good to see the lake was full of water.............

.....soon the flat country turned into hills..................

.                .............and we headed into Casterton, the home of the Kelpie sheep dogs.............

                                                   ...and then south to Portland...........

.

It was lovely to see the wattle trees coming into flower............

We booked into the Portland Bay Holiday Park for the night............

...and went for a walk along the cliff...........to the lighthouse........

...........and overlooking the Bay.

Loved this sign in the park...............

After our walk, we went back to the park, where there was a mobile food van, so we ordered our food...... 

                                   

                             ..and sat around the fire with other patrons and listened to guitar playing.......

The next morning we headed out of Portland, via the wharf area where they load ships with grain and wood chips for overseas............

There is a lot of history at Portland.............and lots of old buildings............

We took a slight detour to the Cape Nelson Lighthouse................

....and found the car park filled with emergency vehicles and police, who said they were doing an investigation....so we took a photo and turned around.........

Next town along the way was to Port Fairy, another town with a lot of history..........

The countryside was lush and green and we saw a lot of dairies, and huge herds of dairy cows...........we  might have stopped at Warrnambool, but it was raining and we kept driving......and soon turned onto the Great Ocean Road..........

Just a few photos of the stunning coastline for you to see..............

I saw this sign and thought it a bit strange, as we all know what side of the road to drive on.........but after a few stops I realised that there were lots of overseas people on the road, which did explain the signs!!

                               

I shall finish this post here, and come back to report on the rest of the trip in Part 2.

Be back soon.....

Blessings, From Jude and Baz.

                                                  

Still catching up on blog posts.................August 2026

                                Here are the 2 books I have ordered in my catchup mode.............July to December 2024, and all of 2025 in one book. I am very happy with this company. And I will probably be able to get all of 2026 in another book, as there are not so many quilt photos, and no retreat posts either. Life has changed.....You can see on the left of the photo, with an older book just in the photo, that they are slightly longer than the previous books.

                                   

I have been very slack over the last couple of years, with not backing up photos and other files on the computer, so was very alarmed when I got this message one morning!!!

                                 

                                 

I am very thankful that it eventually did start up and has been ok since. And I have now backed up the files I needed to, but it did give me a scare. The photo files run into millions as I have taken photos of every quilt that I have done, in fact, more than one photo!! I am trying to go back and delete a lot of those that I no longer need, but it's a slow process. 

 In other August news, Barry had another birthday and there was a morning tea at work for him..............

                                                         

We had a couple of trees in the yard, (I think they are Kurrajong??) that were very messy, they dropped their big seed pods and when they got wet, were carried into the house on people's shoes.....and when we parked the van in the driveway, they fell on the roof and made a sticky mess....... so a decision was made to get the tree man in to deal with them.......and he trimmed some other trees as well.........

                                                               

                                                 

                             

                                                                           

...............and this is what one of them looks like now..........won't be dropping any pods for awhile now!! But it does look a bit sparse at the moment until it shoots out some leaves.......

                             

I have managed to do a few customer quilts..........

We had a trip to the city one day and took Barry's brother and his wife with us.........and then called in to see Mum on the way home...........

Barry was gifted a flight for his birthday..............so we arrived at the local air field..............

                                   

                  .............and flew over Bordertown...........and out north over the Carter farm............

                           

                                 

......it was a good time of the year to see from above........with the canola crops all looking pretty and yellow...........in contrast to the green paddocks.........like a patchwork quilt??

                                    

.............and then to the coast and over Kingston and Cape Jaffa........

                                

                                       

                                                     ..........and back to the airfield again. An amazing experience.

                                                                                                                      

That's about it for now.........I am now up to date with newsfromjude til the 3rd week of August. We are now 6 days into another trip, which I will do in a separate post.

Blessings, From Jude