2019 was a momentous year for travelling for myself and partner in crime Ruthie. We were excitingly planning 2020 with thoughts of several short overseas trips. Whether these trips would ever have happened I will never know. Bang! COVID hit! International borders were “slammed” shut. This phrase often amused us when used by TV news readers and we wondered why they weren’t just closed! Who would have ever thought that we would go through a world wide pandemic in our lifetime.

The early part of COVID was scary, confronting and emotional. Fear of the unknown. I remember listening to a news item where the music was Somewhere Over The Rainbow playing over a collage of pictures of COVID around the world. It really hit home. I was thinking of those I loved, would they get through it, would I get through it? Being in regional Victoria was not as bad as being in fully locked down Melbourne. We stayed in touch with family via FaceTime, Zoom, House Party, Snapchat and any other social media available. Entertaining the grandkids was fun and Ruthie and I put a bit of thought into recording fun videos for their birthdays as we couldn’t see them in person. Strange times indeed. It seemed like a mild winter and we were blessed to be able to walk along our beautiful beach. We were able to pull our masks down as we very rarely saw anyone else.

As the Victorian restrictions eased and the weather was warming up, we decided to explore our own backyard. A double swag was bought and loaded into the Camry and first off we headed to Wilsons Promontory. I hadn’t been here for years and am kicking myself for not returning earlier as it’s only 90 minutes from where we live. The ocean is a vivid blue and several long bushwalking tracks were explored. We both enjoyed a swim after one of those walks. The swag was a success! It was such a mild night, We slept with only the netting zipped up. I lay there staring at such an amazing starlit sky as well as listening to the waves lapping the shoreline. Ruthie wasn’t impressed with my packing skills on our first camping foray. I had forgotten a few of the essentials such as the toolbox and torches. Luckily I only had to drive the tent pegs into sand and the moonlit night gave us enough light.

Next it was off to Waratah Bay for our next camping adventure, which is also in our backyard. On the way home we stopped at a beautiful little cove at Walkerville North. The remnants of historic lime kilns are still very visible along the shore line. The old cemetery was worth the walk up the hill as it filled us in on the history of this place. We called in and got close up to Cape Liptrap lighthouse. We can see the the flashing light from where we live as a faint blip.

The mosquitoes had been busy on us as we sat outside our swag of an evening. We decided we needed a tent to sit in when needed. It would also serve as a dressing room as it was pretty difficult to get dressed in the swag. The choice was a 4 man Aldi instant pop up tent! At this stage I wasn’t prepared to invest in a different vehicle so it all had to fit into the Camry. Now the Camry is a hybrid so the battery is in the boot and doesn’t leave a heap of room so everything has to be packed precisely. These two small getaways fine tuned our camping skills and now we were ready for bigger and better things. Tasmania here we come.