Mornington Peninsula

It was our third wedding anniversary (leather - for those who are interested) on the 15th June, so we decided to do something special to celebrate And we decided to visit Mornington Peninsula last weekend, which is here:

This is largely famous for being a local wine region and if you have been paying careful attention to our previous posts (10 points for those that have), you will see that we were there for a jazz afternoon the weekend before.

At risk of repeating ourselves, we ventured down this path again but this time to near the most southern tip of the peninsula and en route, we bumped into a restaurant where we stopped for lunch and they had a gallery exhibition out the back which included this guilty looking kangaroo:

Other than the hotel, our final destination was the geothermal baths.  A short history of this place is that in the 1970's the Charles brothers had heard that there were hot springs under the ground and decided to buy some land and drill down a kilometer to release these onto their land, where they have since made a mint by building a spa with a number of outdoor pools and charging for access.

Unfortunately, due to the demand for access to the pools (even in the middle of Winter) and our late planning, we could only get a sitting at 5pm and as it has recently been the Winter solstice, things get dark here early and the columns of warm mist ascending from the water obscure everything; so our pictures aren't great and only one is probably worth posting:

Tory in the mist

So, here is a stock photo which should give you a better idea of what it's like:

As you can see, it is a beautiful spot and the pools are idyllic but let me tell you that nothing surpasses the feeling of first dipping your toes and then feet into these pools which stay at a constant 50C.  

Imagine, if you will, the feeling of getting into a bath at home that is just a bit too hot, where you have to slowly ease yourself in inch-by-inch and as you finally fully submerge, you can't help but melt and relax.  This is exactly what it is like but the water never cools.  Consequently, after 15 minutes you start to overheat a little, so it's time to get out and migrate 10 meters to the next pool, where you repeat as above.  It's glorious and we can't wait to do it again.

Mornington Peninsula itself is a beautiful place to be, so the following day we decided to go exploring along the coast and here's just a little taster of what we saw:

Looks surprisingly like Cornwall doesn't it?

Anyhoo, that it's for this week but tonight we go to a burlesque evening hosted by Dita Von Teese.  Stay tuned next week - there will be pictures (you perverts)...