Road trips are in our blood.

We spend a lot of our time traveling without a vehicle, relying on public transportation or our own two feet, but Australia is one of those expansive countries that just begs to be driven. When our favourite UK car rentals agency provided us with a Kia mini-van for a week to take off and explore a little more of Victoria, we jumped at the chance!

Robert and Jesse have toured us all over their area around Bruthen. We drove up to the Buchan Caves and had a long walk; the highlight of which was a group of kangaroos grazing in a cattle paddock just across the creek. The rolling hills, a deep spring green, remind us of the hillsides of central Pennsylvania. We joked about keeping an eye out for Amish kangaroos as we drove.

We picnicked on the coast near Bunga Lake. I’ll spare you my inadequacies in describing the colours and leave that to the pictures. I walked along the beach, giggling at the squeaking of the silica sand beneath my boots. We’ve read about that phenomenon, but this is the first place we’ve experienced the “singing sands.”  The boys ran and wrestled, eventually befriending a fisherman on the shore. Before long, he had the boys on the business end of rods far bigger than any they’d ever wielded elsewhere. Elisha caught a carpet shark (no teeth, evidently) which will be a story that goes down in family fishing history, as it’s the first shark any of the boys have hauled out of any ocean. I napped on the sand, lulled into the deep blue by the wash of foam, the squeak of the sand and the laughter of happy boys.

Wish you were here…