spring water and vegan banquets

we went up to hepburn springs this weekend just to relax (and zac loves the vegan banquet saturday nite at the place we stay at). we stayed at the continetal house- a "vegan life sanctuary" as it says on their website. unfortunately i don't have pictures of anything (other than a few duck and duckling shots at daylesford lake) because of a very unfortunate incident with our slr camera. saturday afternoon we were heading off on a bush walk. zac insisted on putting his water bottle in my bag after he filled it with spring water. i was hesitant cuz i'd hurt my shoulder and my backpack was already bothering it without the extra weight. i put it in and 50m later i felt my back getting really wet, really quickly. i threw the bag down and started pulling everything out, including zac's now empty 1L water bottle. the not so tight lid had opened and spilled thru my bag. my camera was in it's case but with the zip open so could get it out easily to take pictures. i pulled the camera out and water POURED out of it. i was not impressed. it doesn't work at all. we toke it into the city on the way home today. its costing us (well, zac cuz he's not allowed to buy cds for MONTHS now) $88 just to get a quote on repairing it (that money will go towards the repairs if its worth going ahead with it). so in a couple weeks we'll know if its repairable otherwise zac is gonna be saving up a lot of money (no more new instruments or cds for him for ages) to get me a new camera.
other than that incident bringing down the mood for the rest of the weekend (happened early saturday afternoon), the weekend was good.
we brought our bikes to attempt some trails there. we failed. there's some really good intermediate mountain bike trails but i'm not an intermediate mountain biker. i also don't handle steep uphill well (slight slopes up i can do no problem and small steep hills i can do but i forgot how hilly daylesford/hepburn springs is. we did try though. twice.
we also had a good swim in the lake. i miss lakes. there aren't any right around melbourne that you can really swim in and this one is great. warm (once you get in), fairly clean (although zac thought it was disgusting but he doesn't like lakes at all for swimming) and good grassy spots to relax on the sides.
the vegan banquet is at the conti on saturday nites. we always to the full banquet deal for $25 (soup, main and dessert) and its always AMAZING food. i like that it's not just a chef and people hired as kitchen staff that do it all but the staff (and sometimes the WOOFers who are staying there) cook up the meal.
daylesford/hepburn springs area is a great place just to get away from the city for a couple days though and there's lots to do and lots of places to do nothing at too.