I spent a long day yesterday driving from Melbourne south west to the Bellarine Peninsula, having a great lunch and dinner, exploring several small towns and then returning to Melbourne at 1:00am (when the Melbourne streets were still packed with Saturday evening revelers, such is Melbourne). There will be a couple of detailed foodie posts coming out of this expedition. I had lunch at Oakdene Vineyards, which deservedly won an award for best restaurant at a winery in all of Australia. I had dinner at Loam, which opened in 2011 and won three different categories in The Age 2011 Good Food Guide. I have four pages of notes from my dinner at Loam, it was one of the best restaurant experiences I have ever had (sadly without Cathleen to join me). I visited several little towns and just wandered around. Queenscliff and Point Lonsdale are at the south eastern tip of the Bellarine, looking across to the Mornington Peninsula. Ocean Grove is on the southern coast, facing the open ocean. Portarlington in on the north coast. These are all small rural towns, and even on this holiday weekend did not feel overrun with tourists. (Quite the opposite.) I took a lot of photos, some of the more scenic included here. I took picture of most of my food, causing a child at lunch to wonder if I was 'someone who wrote about restaurants for the paper'. I told her I had children at home who just like to see what I do on my trips. The first photo in this series was taken just up the road from Loam. The sheep were not keen on me getting much closer.The next photo is one of three from the beach at Point Lonsdale.The third photo is the main street (I guess here they would say high street) in Queenscliff. This is a great little town where I had black licorice ice cream and marveled that there were still 4 - 5 bookstores in the tiny town. The next two shots are also Point Lonsdale, the fisherman on the pier being one of my favorites. Every little town seems to have a long fishing pier and they are well used. The next two shots were taken at the same spot in the central part of the peninsula, and give a sense of the pastoral feel of the area. The fence post and hay bales being my attempt to be arty with my new wide angle lens. The last photo was taken early in the day at the beach at Ocean Grove when it was still cool and overcast. In spite of the weather there were lots of people swimming, thought the water looked very brisk.