Another Day in Paradise

20 Roads for 20 Years - Drive No. 16

To celebrate its 20th Anniversary, the Mazda MX-5 Club of Victoria published 20 Roads for 20 Years, a book that describes twenty of the best MX-5 drives in Victoria and Tasmania. With two of the drives describing how to do "quick laps" around Winton and Phillip Island race tracks and another two in Tasmania, I think it is fair to say that in time we should complete 16 of the drives and perhaps 18 with a little planning.

With a forecast of a fine day and nothing particularly urgent to do for clients, it was a good opportunity to try one of the drives from the book. We selected number 16, a run around the the heartland of the Mornington Peninsula. The staring point in the book is Frankston so we started with a drive (top down of course) through Reseach and Warrandyte to Ringwood where we joined Eastlink through to the other end. From Frankston we headed out along the Nepean Highway, up Olivers Hill and into Mornington for some "retail therapy" for the navigator - another pair of shoes - and morning tea.

We set off from Mornington along the coast on the Esplanade to Mount Martha and Safety Beach. As you arrive at Safety Beach, you have the unique experience of driving under Port Phillip Bay (to be more precise, under the canal entrance to the Matha Cove Marina project). Presumably, the road was put under the canal so there would be no height limits on boats using the marina.

At the south end of Safety Beach, most people would turn right and head for Dromana. Our route was different and took us left as we headed for the hills and the heartland of the Peninsula. We didn't get all that far however before we came to our first departure from our intended route for the day. Dunns Creek Road, described as a "wind in the hair experience", was closed and we had to detour through Red Hill. We got ourselves back on track, or so we thought, as we soon found ourselves on a dirt road. This is most uncharacteristic for anything the MX-5 club does. In my defense, the drives in the book are not "run notes" and sometimes it is difficult to work out the intended route between two landmarks.

After driving in a couple of rather large circles along some rather pleasant MX-5 roads, we managed to work where the book had intended us to go and decided that, in the end, we had covered most of the route as it was intended to be be. We then left Red Hill and Main Ridge behind and drove down to Flinders for lunch. We stopped at the Flinders Bakehouse Cafe for a pie with salad and chips. The salad was nice but my pie was dried out because it has been kept in the warmer for too long. Yes, it was late when we stopped for lunch but that is no excuse for serving up poor quality food. Definitely be eating somewhere else the next time we are in Flinders.

Following lunch we did the grand tour of Flinders (it doesn't take long) before heading back out along the Boneo Road. At Cape Schanck we made an unplanned detour to the cape and the lighthouse.

 Looking over Bushrangers Bay back towards Flinders

 Cape Schanck Lighthouse

As it was getting on in the afternoon, we only walked part of the way out to the cape itself before jumping back in the car and picking up the drive again. As we approached Rosebud, we turned onto Browns Road and headed back towards Main Ridge where we picked up Purves Road to the top of Arthurs Seat. The run down to Dromana is tight and twisty and a bit of fun but, to be honest, not all that good as an MX-5 road because it is too tight and slow - maybe it would be better in the uphill direction.

Dromana marked the end of the published drive so we made our way onto the Moorooduc Highway, past Frankston and onto Eastlink, this time going all the way and through the tunnel, and then home. It was a really pleasant day out along some roads you wouldn't normally take so we are looking forward to trying some more drives from the book.