An overview of the road covered during our fourth week of cycling in Australia.

2018.03.03 – [AU] Sale ==> Morwell (65 kms | Total: 4232 kms) – After savoring our last courtesy continental breakfast at our motel, we left town under a heavy morning fog. As the road was fairly flat and offered a good shoulder, we managed to keep a good cycling pace. We stopped at a café in Rosedale, some 27kms away. We took another rest at a McDonald´s at the entrance of Traralgon, less than 15 kms before our final destination of the day. We checked into our motel after cycling 65kms. Although our motel had a somewhat of a cheesy name, “Always Welcome Motel”, we were quite pleased with our accommodation. We had an excellent Saturday night buffet at the nearby Morwell club.

2018.03.04 – [AU] Morwell ==> Drouin (56 kms | Total: 4288 kms) – The motel manager delivered our continental breakfast to our room at 7:30am as per our request. Shortly after leaving Morwell, we started cycling along the Princess freeway. Yesterday, the highway had transformed into a freeway shortly before arriving in Morwell. As we had noticed from previous Sunday, the vehicle traffic appeared again to be quite heavy today. Although we cycled on a wide shoulder, the noise of the speeding vehicles was not enjoyable at all. We were in need of a good rest from the noise when we stopped at yet another McDonald’s in Warragul. We were relieved to cycle the remainder of the 10kms to Drouin on a secondary road. For our evening meal, we walked some 30 minutes from our accommodation to the town center for some Chinese food.

2018.03.05 – [AU] Drouin ==> Beaconsfield (45 kms | Total: 4333 kms) – We looked forward to today’s cycling day as our route would be taking us along quiet and flat secondary roads and our planned journey would be less than 45kms. We had our breakfast at a nice café some 8 kms after leaving our accommodation. We stopped at McDonald’s in Pakenham, with less than 10kms left before our final destination. Unfortunately, the remainder of the journey proved to be a bit challenging as traffic got much heavier and we lost our road shoulder. We cycled for much of the time on the sidewalk. We started to see a few 7-eleven convenience stores on the road – a sure sign that we were getting close to a large metropolitan area, namely Melbourne. After checking into our accommodation, Jenny did a large clothes washing by using our motel’s guest laundry facility. As our accommodation was a few kms away from the town center, we had our evening meal at a fast food burger restaurant operating on the motel premises.

2018.03.06 – [AU] Beaconsfield ==> Melbourne (51 kms | Total: 4383 kms) – We left our accommodation with a bit of apprehension regarding our experience yesterday with the increased traffic and lost of our road shoulder. Nonetheless, we followed our gps’ proposed route which appeared to lead us to bicycle paths whenever possible. We clearly appreciated Maps.me route for most of the way into Melbourne. Unfortunately, we encountered a few roadblocks along the way due to the construction of a train extension route that appeared to have taken over much of the bicycle path that we had planned to use. We briefly stopped at a café along the way for a late breakfast. Surprisingly, we managed to cycle to our accommodation without encountering too much traffic. We enjoyed some dumplings for our evening meals. We later walked to the Chinese visa application center that we planned to visit tomorrow. As we inquired from a lady that was coming out of the building whether we were at the right place, she warned us that the line up was typically quite long – extending sometimes outside of the building.

2018.03.07 – [AU] Melbourne ==> Melbourne (0 kms | Total: 4383 kms) – Both Jenny and I did not sleep well as we were dreaded thinking of our visit to the Chinese visa application center. Although our visa appointment was scheduled for 11am, we left our accommodation by 9am. It took us less than 10 minutes to cycle to the visa application center. To our surprise, there was no line up leading outside of the building. We took a queuing number from the ticket booth’s category “those with an appointment”. After a 10-15 minutes wait, our number was called. As we had read all sorts of negative comments on the internet about the rudeness of staff, we were expecting a difficult time. The young agent quickly went over our documents which we had painstakingly completed, reviewed and re-reviewed. Well, we learned that our Costco passport photos were not compliant with the Chinese visa application size. Nonetheless, the agent managed to trim the pictures with a pair of scissor. Then we were asked for our old passports that included our previously issued Chinese visas. We did not have those with us. Unfortunately, we learned that Jenny, as a Chinese born, needed to provide this document otherwise her visa request from Australia could not be processed. She was told that she should go to Canada for her visa application. Alternately she could provide her Canadian immigration card but there was no guarantee that this document would be adequate for her visa request. In addition, we were asked to provide a printed version of our Australian visa which, for Canadians, was simply an electronic record linked to the passport – called an Electronic Travel Authority (ETA). Our initial Chinese visa application fears had in fact materialized. Thankfully, the center provided a courtesy desktop PC and printer which allowed us to print our ETAs. The more challenging aspect was to get our hands on a copy of Jenny’s previous Chinese visa. In a moment of despair and urgency, we sent an email to Pascal who had been living at our home during our travels. We were relieved when Pascal answered our email request for help. We had a brief WeChat video session with him to explain our request. After some guidance, Pascal quickly located Jenny’s old passport and magically sent us, via email, a perfect sized pictures of both the old visa and the passport main page. After printing this document, we once again grabbed a queuing ticket number. By that time, the waiting room had started to fill up and we ended waited for 30-40 minutes to be called at a service window … of the same agent which we saw earlier. Interestingly, our number was called shortly after 11am – the exact time of our original appointment. After another 20 nerve-raking minutes with the agent who meticulously reviewed our documents, she finally issued us visa pick-up slips. We left the visa center totally drained and relieved.

To celebrate, we cycled a few kms to a Chinese restaurant for some dim sum and Peking duck. We later stopped at a nearby grocery store for some supplies. We cycled a short distance further to our accommodation. We checked into our apartment, with a full kitchen facility, for the next three nights. We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening resting and recovering from our crazy visa application experience. Thank you again Pascal for checking your phone before leaving home!

2018.03.08 – [AU] Melbourne ==> Melbourne (0 kms | Total: 4383 kms) – After a home cooked breakfast, we took the tram at the corner of our apartment to the city center. The previous day, we managed to purchase, at our apartment front desk, a special tourist edition of the public transit card: Myki. Once in the city center, we spent a few hours on a self-guided walking tour that brought us through various lane-ways and streets including some popular districts such as Chinatown. In order to take a break from our walk, we hopped onto a free tram that covered the perimeter of the city center. We stopped in the Dockland area for lunch at the Nando’s restaurant. We took the tram back to resume our walking tour which focused on lane-ways covered in murals. We returned to our accommodation late in the afternoon. We cooked our evening meal in our room.

2018.03.09 – [AU] Melbourne ==> Melbourne (0 kms | Total: 4383 kms) – After breakfast, we left our room around 10am, similar to yesterday, and headed back to the city center by tram. We transferred tram in order to visit the large Queen Victoria Market. After a late morning coffee break, we headed back to the city center. We walked a few kms to the beautiful and expansive Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria where we walked for a couple of hours. Again we returned to our accommodation by tram and cooked our evening meal in our room.