Queenscliff and fish and chips

from w
Yesterday we drove down to Queenscliff, a pleasant little town half an hour's drive from Geelong. They have their own Council - a kind of snobbery perhaps? Lovely old hotels, plenty of boats, access to a ferry that goes over to Sorrento, and the best fish and chips shop opposite the beach parkland. We bought some fresh mussels also which I cooked today. Anyway, we made drawings of one of the lighthouses there and noticed there were a couple of dozen people fishing from rocks below us. Also a couple in the car near us were eating their fish and chips and the seagulls were investigating and hoping for a bite or two. We used to visit Queenscliff occasionally as guests of the Military guys at the Fort - at the time when Fijian soldiers did a short course there. Not these days though after coups and suchlike.

Queenscliff has sentimental value for me also as my grandparents brought their children to Queenscliff every January for a holiday - by boat from Melbourne. Also Grandad was in the Victorian Navy at one time working on a torpedo boat they say. Also my Dad worked for a short time on the couta boats in Queenscliff when he was seventeen until he decided that working with wool was to be his career instead of the sea.

I was given a letter from my grandfather Charles Lay to his girl in Melbourne, Francis. November 1893 probably when he was in the Victorian Navy. Signed 'hotheaded lover'! They did marry and my father George Lay was one of their children.