Two Days by the Bay

It doesn’t take much to keep the Failboats happy.  We once managed to make an entire afternoon’s entertainment out of walking from one end of a pier to another.  So when the Melbourne Failboats contingent headed to Rye for an overnight stay a few weeks ago, I shouldn’t have been surprised that we managed to pack roughly one week’s worth of enjoyment into a little over twenty-four hours.

We didn’t even start before dawn, as we have with some of our trips.  In fact, once we arrived in Rye, our first order of business was to find ourselves some fish and chips and a beach and combine the two for lunch.  Although, come to think of it, our actual first order of business ended up being a search for the key safe at our accommodation, which required a phone call before it could be located.  Who knew a small black box could be so difficult to find?

Find it we did, after a thorough tour of the rather slopy grounds around the house itself.  We also found ourselves a bedroom each and some glorious views.  Aimee had provided us with gorgeous accommodation indeed!  We subsequently went on to find some amazing fish and chips, a beach and a whole bunch of seagulls.

What do you do once you’ve consumed an inappropriate amount of fish and chips for lunch?  You go for a walk along the nearest pier, of course (piers apparently being the natural habitat of Failboats).  The Rye Pier was conveniently nearby but it seemed to last forever – I swear we spent the afternoon simply reaching the end of it – but it came with a bonus giant stringray on the way back.  There’s absolutely no sense of scale in the photo I took but I can assure you it was easily one and a half metres across and it attracted a huge audience of people who watched it lazily swim under the pier, take fright at a scuba diver, and then head back over the other side of the pier again.

Unfortunately, none of us took a photo of the stingray on our phones, which was a shame because we had instituted a policy of making the rest of the Failboats as jealous as possible of our adventures.  We shared countless photos of the delicious food we were eating, the beautiful coastlines we were seeing, not to mention the amazing anti-pasto platter we prepared for dinner.  And when we weren’t able to come closer than several hundred metres to the Cape Schanck Lighthouse, we shared photos of lighthouse fan Emily looking sad.  With a teeny lighthouse in the background.

In an effort to treat you all like honourary Failboats, I will now provide you with a whole bunch of photos illustrating just what an amazing time we had without you.

With three levels to spare, there was a lot of house to explore! Emily is coming out the second level bedroom wing and you can see the staircase down to the bottom level to the right.

We followed up our healthy lunch with some Cold Rock goodness. This is an example of the sort of photo we were sending to our not-so-lucky Failboat friends.

Emily and Aimee set out to reach the end of the Rye Pier. Little did we know we’d be still walking half a day later…

The giant stingray! It was amazing to watch.

This is the very end of Rye Pier, looking very picturesque and attainable here.

We ventured to the back beach, where the winds were fiercer and the waves icy cold. They also attempted to drown me and my camera at one stage.

This is going to be the cover for our new single, Silhouette.

Glorious cheese! Aimee had ensured there was a different knife for every type of cheese and paste on this particular board.

We made use of a set of animal coasters that were apparently designed by people who’d never seen the animals in question. The cow-pig with duck feet was our favourite.

Pensively regarding the seaside at Cape Schanck.

Our next adventure was to walk all the way down this boardwalk. Along the way, we designed our own version of Forbidden Island based on our surroundings.

An alternate cover for our Silhouette single.

This is Pulpit Rock at the base of the boardwalk. It’s also one of the last photos I took as my camera battery died soon afterwards.

Here we are, trying to look excited about the epic climb back up.

I learnt a valuable lesson on this trip: If you have a spare battery for your camera, it’s generally a good idea to bring it with you.  Turns out spare batteries are completely useless if you leave them at home, meaning your camera will die halfway through your adventures on Cape Schanck and you’ll have to make do with your phone for the rest of the trip.

By the time we headed back home, we’d packed in visits to three different beaches, some delicious food, many a game played late into the night and a hungry visit to a strawberry farm.  Stay tuned for our next adventure, wherever it may be!