A welcome break from the sweltering city: 3 days based at Port Albert, an historic seaside village in the East Gippsland region, east of Melbourne. Following a shipwreck here in 1841, a boom town developed here as colonial Victorians began to exploit the harbour as a gateway to the goldfields in the hills to the north. When railways reached eastern Victoria, the shipping trade dried up.

For those who haven't experienced it, Christmas in SE Australia is usually a time of sultry days or even scorching heat, interrupted by thunderstorms. Down here on the Bass Strait coast we can enjoy the sea breezes - and hope to glimpse, again, the kangaroo mob that populates the swampy scrub at the end of our little (unpaved) street.

September 2022: A short spring break based at Inverloch, a seaside town on the Gippsland coast. Scenic drives lead east to Venus Bay, with its magnificent sweep of ocean beach, or west around the rocky coast of the Bunurong Coastal Park towards Cape Paterson.