SPRING IN MELBOURNE

Jerome writes:

On Sunday the sun came out at last! We wanted to make the most of it, so we went to the beach in the suburb of Frankston, it reminded us a bit of Fremantle. Quite a few other Melbournians had the same idea, so it was busy, but we enjoyed the sunny weather and walking on the beach.

On Monday, we went for a drive up through the Dandenongs to the Tesslar Tulip festival. We stopped on the way at the Grants picnic ground, a place were you can feed the parrots and birds. We got out and put bird seed in our hands and stood still and the birds landed on us to eat the seed! This place was even more significant to us because when we came to Melbourne eight years ago, we came and fed the birds here as well, Joise was only 2 and I was 4 and I remember a bird landing on my head! We fed the sulphur crested cockatoo's and some lovely green and red parrots.

Then we drove on up to the the tulip festival, which it had a Dutch theme, of course. We walked through the fields of brightly coloured tulips and we loved seeing God's creativity to make so many different vibrantly coloured flowers. The property was bought by a couple who had immigrated from Holland in the 1940s. They planted tulips, which were very novel and interesting to the local Aussies back then. The property is now owned by their son. It was a great day.

We drove down to Geelong on Tuesday and we think we've found the biggest caravan park in Australia, with about 500 sites and an extra 300 overflow sites for the peak season - and funnily only about 10 sites are being used at the moment! Which means we have nearly exclusive use of the wonderful playground here!

Today we went to the Ford discovery centre and we learned about how they make Ford cars at their massive factory in Geelong. The company was started by Henry Ford, who designed his first automobile in 1896 called the Quadracycle. He then started the Ford motor company in the very early 1900s and he was known for starting the production line. Every car the company produced came in any colour you liked, as long as it was black! Today, the Ford factory produces one car every one minute and uses 70,000 tons of steel! We finished the afternoon by having lunch on the foreshore with our bollard friends and watched a storm roll in over the bay.