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This was the first time Shovel and Gumby had flown together since meeting in 2016. Over land is how we'd previously travelled until a trip to Geelong to celebrate Gumby's step dad's 70th Birthday had us flying south. The view leaving Mount Isa following the recent heavy rains was spectacular and we felt grateful for the opportunity to witness this from the air. Shovel loves planes and flying and was completely in his element sitting by the window.
Museum of Play and Art (MoPA)
 Point Addis is located about 10 kilometres west of Torquay along the SurfCoast, just past the world-famous Bells Beach. Gumby had caught a cold so we opted for a small adventure today, a few kilometre return walk to the Point Addis lookout along the Koorie Cultural Trail.
Sheep farming began in Geelong in 1835 and in 1868 the first woollen mill was opened. Geelong was known for many years as the 'wool centre of the world' and in 1988 the first wool museum in Australia was opened in Geelong in an iconic 1872 bluestone wool store on Moorabool Street near Geelong's waterfront. The museum takes you through the wool harvest, an interactive and hands on display from fleece to fabric, learning the techniques of scouring, combing, spinning and weaving. There is also a Reminiscence Cottage; rooms in the design of the way a home may have been between the decades from 1930s to 1950s, this is a multi-award winning sensory experience for people that may have difficulty communicating. We also enjoyed viewing the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibition.
At its time of construction in 1923, this former woollen mill was hailed as the most progressive and modern mill in Australia. Known as the Valley Worsted Mills the buildings, which had laid relatively abandoned since the 1970's were purchased in 2011 and with an estimated cost of $70m transformed into a brewery producing delicious craft beer, called Little Creatures.
 stencil art on a shipping container by the amazing Jae @myheadsajungle  Originally established in Fremantle, Western Australia in 2000 the Little Creatures team, which has since been purchased by Lion Nathan, a subsidiary of Kirin produces a variety of ales and lagers, including an American style Pale Ale and Roger's Amber Ale. The Little Creatures beers are marketed as craft beer meaning the only ingredients used in the beer making process are Malt, Hops, Yeast and Water. Apparently, the water is a key ingredient to the overall taste of the beer. Shovel and I took a tour of the Little Creatures Brewery in South Geelong, their second brewery, which begun brewing in 2013 to provide a fresher product to the East Coast of Australia. We were told during the tour that the water in Fremantle is hard, whereas the water in Geelong is soft, therefore they process the water to re-create the same level of hardness in the water prior to using it in their beer to ensure the flavours are consistent. The brewery is also co2 emission free and is a leader in water conservation, hygiene and although the hop does have natural preservative properties, they do not add any preservatives to any of the beer products, making for not only a great tasting beer, but an environmental conscious one that doesn't leave you feel super sick. We also learnt surprisingly that beer from a can keeps better, retaining its flavour as glass is a poor insulator from heat and light and that you should always, I mean always pour beer out. Meaning don't ever drink it from the vessel as the beer is sealed with the gas at the top, therefore your first mouthful will be all gas, making you feel bloated... fascinating. Shovel and I enjoyed a brewed on-site beer and a lovely meal of brisket, pumpkin pizza and zucchini salad. "It's good to be a little different"
 A worthy contender for our most standout adventure, not because we actually saw ghosts, we didn't, although we both believe to have felt something around our ankles in the kitchen, but for the impressive theatrical story telling by our guide. The tour lead as to many different sections of the bluestone build, that was opened in 1853, housing 150 inmates and even outside into the grounds where Shovel was given a demonstration of the 'cat of nine tails' a lashing apparatus, a knotted whip if you will, often embedded with broken glass or scrap tin to apply the most brutal trauma to a convict or prisoner's back, in the form of scratches like a cat claw might elicit. A tripod whipping post was erected on the grounds of the gaol near a side entrance. The gate was then opened for passes by to witness the inexplicable flogging. One notorious resident of the gaol was Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read who was a prisoner of the maximum security, HM Prison Geelong, now referred to as the Old Geelong Gaol, in the mid to late 1980's before its closure in 1991. Chopper has said on several occasions prior to his death in 2013 that Geelong Gaol would be the last place he would like to return back to. Even during his tenure living conditions within the gaol were crude and harsh with open air windows, no heating and minimal electricity. There was also Frederick "Josh" Clark who is said to still haunt the gaol to this day. Josh was an infamous criminal that spent the majority of his 74 years in one gaol or another. He died whilst severing yet another sentence at Geelong Gaol in 1904, this ending the career of one of Victoria's most "decorated" criminals. The mate of notorious gangster "Squizzy" Taylor, Angus Murray escaped from HM Prison Geelong in 1923, by climbing down the side of the building using knotted sheets to a waiting car where he was reuniting with his gangster mate back in Melbourne, before going onto shot a Mr Berriman in a Glenferrie bank that same year. Interesting to note, Squizzy's wife, Ida 'Babe' Pender, later became a patient of the Beechworth Lunatic Asylum, which we have also visited. The architecture of the Gaol is impressive and well worth a visit just to admire the brilliance of the artisan stonemasons and convicts that painstakingly carved each block of basalt and to see the gaol in its original glory before it is redeveloped. The Geelong Gaol was purchased in mid 2018, have a read of this news article for more details.
I grew up believing Matthew Flinders was the first European settler to discover the area known as Geelong, having gone to a school named in his honour with the slogan, 'Looking Forward' my impression was of him looking out over the bay from the peaks of the You Yangs, about 30 kilometres from the city of Geelong. But, it wasn't to be, apparently a John Murray, Commander of the HMS Lady Nelson, was the first recorded European to visit the region in 1802. Matthew Flinders did visit the region a few months later and did climb the You Yangs, but he wasn't the first as I had previously thought and didn't actually settle Geelong. In 1803 a Charles Grimes mapped the area, but deemed it unfit for settlement, although the penal colony of Sullivan Bay was established. William Buckley, escaped from Sullivan Bay the same year and lived with the local Wathaurong people for 32 years. He was later pardoned and became an interpreter between the indigenous and europeans. The next Europeans to visit the area were Hamilton Hume and William Hovell arriving in the area known as Geelong on 16 December 1824, despite leaving two days later they did learn the indigenous name for the area was Corayo. It wasn't until 1836 that the area was settled by non indigenous and gazetted as a town in 1838, just three weeks after Melbourne. Geelong soon became a major wool exporter with many woollen mills operating in the area for several decades. Geelong officially became a city in 1910.
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