Leaving Australia for a while

It was an uneventful drive to Lakes Entrance, about four hours east of Melbourne, where we'd be leaving our van while we headed to Malaysia to take possession of our new boat. Lakes Entrance is the name of the town and that's exactly what it is, an entrance from the sea into Australia's largest series of inland lakes, the Gippsland Lakes,

The entrance (exit?) was originally a natural feature that only flooded from the sea occasionally. It is now open to the sea permanently. This allows direct ocean access for Australia's largest fishing fleet. In the photo above, you can see a dredger parked in the middle of the channel. This work is ongoing as the entrance continually silts up and there are treacherous sandbars reaching outside the entrance to grab unwary mariners without local knowledge of the constantly shifting seabed.

It's a pretty spot and a very popular in-season holiday destination.

The town has a long, somewhat tacky seafront parade, but, there are also some sophisticated and interesting dining spots.

We enjoyed a lovely, but expensive, fresh fish and chip lunch at another over-the-water establishment and soaked up the sunshine of a beautiful day. The outside dining room was upstairs and the fishing boat pulled up and unloaded the fish downstairs, can't get much fresher than that. We followed lunch with a walk on the long, beautiful beach that had sand the consistency of a fine, soft powder. Then, we headed back to the van and our lakefront campsite where we had to start picking through our possessions to decide what was staying and what we'd be taking to Malaysia and the boat, our new home.