First Night Market and Sunday Brekky

This past weekend marked the first full weekend of summer holiday. The caravan parks fill up and so do the beaches and the streets. We walked down to the Friday night market at Lake Pertobe, and it was definitely the most traffic we've seen in Warrnambool in the five months we've been here.

Our once vacant field is now home to hundreds.

Unprecedented traffic...

 The market stalls are set up along Lake Pertobe and the kids activities seemed endless.

Rental boats on Lake Pertobe

We checked out all the vendors and some great musicians, but as you might guess, we especially appreciated the food booths. I consumed nearly the whole bag of kettle corn in about 10 minutes. We had the traditional sausage on white bread with onions, some greek nibbles, a felafel pita, and a slice of Persian love cake - best cake ever!

Andy and his kettle corn addict

As we left the market, we walked through the summer carnival grounds next to the beach. There are about 7 or 8 rides and about as many games. The rides look pretty similar to ones at home.

Andy is contemplating the Hangover ride in the background. Not.

As we made our way home the long way, we happened upon some camels in a clearing. Yes, camels. We surmised that they are available for camel rides, but they looked displaced and sad. (Apparently there is an overpopulation of feral camels in the Northern Territory.)

On Sunday, we met our good friends Bernie and Kristian for breakfast at our favorite place on the beach called Simon's. Andy and I had our Christmas Eve dinner there also.

From our table we could watch the swim racers finish. They all walked down to the end of the beach, swam out and around for a total of 1.4 km. They also had a shorter junior race. No sharks in sight. Most of the swimmers were in wet suits, but a few brave souls wore only their Speedos.

On our walk home, we watched what appeared to be a sailboat regatta. The spinnakers were brightly colored and provided a whole new landscape for us. Although there are a few boats moored over by the breakwater, there isn't really a marina here so this many boats at one time is a real treat.

You can see 8 or 9 surfers in the foreground

Summer activities are in full swing down here, but we're headed north for a little over a week. First we'll stop in to visit our landlords up near Daylesford for a couple days over New Year's (we wrote about our first trip up there here). Then, on January 2nd we're off to Sydney and Canberra for a few days each.