Victorian Open - Another win for Stefan

The tour organisers nearly missed out on finding a venue for the Victorian leg of the championships. Having left the well "civilised" Mini Golf world around Melbourne without taking the opportunity to hold the event you could already see the stress and anxiety in the face of the Tour Manager.

However, everything turned out fine with East Gippsland being a touristy enough area to provide several Mini Golf courses with PMGA accredited world-class venues. The Bairnsdale Archery, Mini Golf & Games Park was the lucky winner to present the Victorian title to either Marlene or Stefan.

This traditional, rather links-course style of a Mini Golf course had a view tricky holes where luck had to be on your side. However, and luckily as the spectators and golfers afterwards commented, these holes did not influence the outcome of the event.

From a rating perspective Bairnsdale offered a much more sophisticated system again and the Par 46 course had everything from the short Par 2 to one very daunting Par 4.

This time it was Stefan who had the better start and kicked off the round with back-to-back hole in ones at hole 2 and 3. The spirit of Marlene already seemed to be broken. After the first 9 holes Stefan was leading by 3 strokes at two under par. Marlene straight away bounced back at hole 10 with a Par where Stefan only bogeyed. However, this was the closest that Marlene would get to Stefan up until the 16th hole. The 17th once again was the decider with Marlene only managing a triple bogey losing another three strokes to Stefan. A wonderful Par on the last hole could not turn the result around and Stefan won by three strokes in the end. 

Another great event and breathtaking finale. Marlene has already sworn revenge at the soon to be held "Australian Capital Territory Open" in Canberra.

Victorian Open

Bairnsdale Archery, Mini Golf & Games Park

Position  Player Name    To Par    Total

1             Stefan             +1          47

2             Marlene           +4          50

Wilsons Promontory National Park

A little more than 200km from Melbourne, Wilsons Promontory National Park makes a popular weekend trip for the city people. It is also the most southern point of the Australian mainland. The main camping ground at Tidal River has nearly 500 campsites and there is a lottery every year for the spots in the summer holidays between Christmas and end of January. Luckily for us, it's not peak season anymore and we arrived mid-week, so only a few of the camp spots were actually occupied.

The park offers wonderful beaches, great walking tracks and even some "summit hikes" which I always love (..Austrians always love). As we are spoilt with "squeaky sand" beaches in West Australia (well, at least there is the whitest beach in the world in WA) we are not that interested in beaches, we are looking forward to the walks to get us fitter and prepared for the Inka Trail, our ultimate goal for 2014 in Peru.

Although the weather was rather "Victorian" (for our European readers that means, the weather is more or less like in Europe in April, cloudy, rainy, but it could still have all seasons in one day) it didn't put us off from our hiking plans. After our tour through the Yarra Valley we arrived at the camp site in the park in the evening, had a nice meal and went straight to rest.

In the morning the forecast predicted "a view showers" which is still better than "rain" and it actually remained overcast (cloudy) all day with only few, scattered, light rainfall. Mount Oberon is a very popular hike and not too long either. The weather wasn't too bad yet and therefore we started off to climb this "monster" of a mountain. After not even an hour we reached the summit at 2,350ft (558m). The views though are spectacular with Tidal River Beach and Campsite on the left. The next beach you see is Squeaky Bay and then Whisky Bay which is just behind me (Stefan) in the picture. 

We were still motivated after this walk and headed over to Lilly Pilly Gully for a rainforest walk which was actually a lot longer than the Mount Oberon climb. On the Lilly Pilly circuit we took a side step and climbed Mount Bishop as well which gave us spectacular views from the other side of the bays.

All in all we came to 17km of walking that day which filled us with pride and joy. Even more so as it started raining heavily at night which continued throughout the next day. Just because of that we would have left Wilsons Promontory anyway if there hadn't been another incident..

Only in the morning we realised that the fixed window of our Ford Transit where we are actually sleeping with our heads was leaking and the mattress got soaked with water. Waking up to this realisation was rather horrible. On the one hand we tried to stop more water coming into the van, on the other hand we tried to clean up the existing mess by taking off linens, etc. It was not a nice morning. After a few deep breaths I straight away called a glass company and arranged an appointment in Sale, about 125km further to the East of Wilsons and off we went.

Yarra Valley and Mount Dandenong

From the Mornington Peninsula we made our way back north to the Yarra Valley as we didn't want to miss another one of the great wine regions of Australia. On the way we drove up Mount Dandenong and had a meal in the Sky High Restaurant with a nice view of Melbourne in the distance.

Well, that's obviously not the view but you can see we had fun :-) Here we go:

The next day we spent another full day with wine, beer, chocolate, delicatessen, etc. tasting. Not much to add really than a view pictures so you get an idea:

Freshly picked grapes at Yering Station; Tarra Warra winery was another favourite for us.

What a job at White Rabbit brewery, would we all grow such great sideburns working in a bewery?

Yarra Valley Chocolaterie - chocolate in any form and shape

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Mornington Peninsula

We have come back to our beloved campervan Wookie which was parked in Melbourne for the whole 4 weeks of our "break" from the long trip. 

The visit of my dad and his wife was really great, we spent a mostly relaxing time in Perth with a short trip to Bunker Bay in the Margaret River Wine Region. They have assisted us as best as they could while we were preparing for the move or actually the packers to pick up all our furniture and other stuff which will go into storage until we decide again where to settle. We had to go through everything in the house deciding if we take it with us, sell it or just give it away to charity. 

In the end it was a good exercise clearing out a lot and providing the "Op-Shops" (Second-hand shops run by charities) with lots of new stock. Marlene organised the clearance sale on Gumtree (like willhaben.at) having up to 52 ads running at one point in time, incredible. It was also incredible what we could actually sell and how quickly we got rid of stuff we didn't expect to, and how long it took for the stuff to sell which we thought would be an easy exercise. The last day before the packers arrived was horrible to be honest. At 11pm at night we still hadn't gone through everything and we were so exhausted and tired. But it all turned out fine and on Thursday before we left to Melbourne again we even sold the car (!), the elliptical trainer and the Foosball table just 5 hours before departure. There is nothing to worry about anymore, that's the greatest feeling being back to our camping life.

After our arrival in Melbourne we definitely wanted to take it easy the first few days, just went shopping and made our way to the Mornington Peninsula, south-east of Melbourne to a nice Caravan park. A long sleep and a nice breakfast in the morning and off we went just shortly before midday. We drove along the shores of the peninsula up to Nepean National Park which is the south-western tip of the Peninsula and also the entrance to the huge Port Philip protecting Melbourne from the Southern Ocean.

Point Nepean was used as a defence post to protect the harbour from enemy ships entering. Especially during the World Wars it was of importance, nowadays it is of course abandoned from the military due to modern technology.

You can still walk around in the tunnel system that was built as a fort and as protection for the huge guns that were stationed here.

On the next day we took the opportunity and went to Mornington Peninsula Hot Springs. A day long relaxation exercise in the 27 or so spa baths. You can walk all the way up a little creek with different kinds of baths lined up like a Hot Spa, Silent Spa, a Sauna and a Turkish bath and on top a 360 degree pool with views of the surrounding cattle fields, very relaxing.

Margaret River Invitational Tournament - Stefan takes the title home

Another thrilling event took place in the home state of Marlene and Stefan, Western Australia on their short return to finalise everything for their world tour in 2014-2015. Staged in Dunsborough at the Simmo's Ice Cream Goofy Golf Course with two invited guests being Erwin, Stefan's dad and Uli, his wife.

The competition couldn't have been any closer and more dramatic again. Marlene started off really well this time with a hole in one on the Par 3 hole 6 and was leading by two strokes after the first 9 holes. As the course became tougher the hole scores diverged considerably and Marlene was leading by 3 strokes after hole 15. A bogey on the 16th where Stefan easily birdied and a double bogey for Marlene on the 17th sealed the Championships in favour of Stefan edging out the tournament by just one stroke.

As the competition becomes tighter and tighter the world is now looking towards Victoria where the next leg of the championship is going to take place.

Margaret River Wine Region Invitational 

Round 2 of the Australian Championships

Western Australian Championships

Position  Player Name    To Par    Total

1             Stefan              0         54

2             Marlene          +1         55

3             Erwin              +5        59

4             Uli                   +12      66