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23rd Nov 2005
To Melbourne
Wednesday 23rd November, 2005
The usual morning kerfuffle with action, decisions, indecisions and action. Anne went along to the hairdressers (again) to try and get her hair cut, but this time they didn’t have any free slots. We packed a few necessities and left the house at about 11 bound for the Hume Highway and Melbourne.
We had no particularly fixed itinerary; it’s a long way – about 670 km so we weren’t massively hopeful of completing it within the day but decided just to see how things went.
After the dire warnings that the road was one of the most boring on the planet, I didn’t think it was too bad, the topography at the roadsides is varied, there are trees and occasional buildings and vistas … its not for example like driving across areas of desert in The States … or the red centre of Australia for that matter.
We stopped once or twice along the way; once at a tourist information centre just inside the Victoria boundary and there, collected a whole swathe of publications and maps and information about the various districts.
We kept seeing signs on the roadsides urging drivers to watch out for Koalas and so occupied our time through these sections, scanning the roadside gums just in case there happened to be an itinerant bear wedged in a fork, but no such luck.
The next time we stopped we were near Wangaretta. It was about 3 in the afternoon and we suddenly thought to ourselves that Melbourne was an achievable goal after all. So we phoned ahead to Anthony and Bev to check out the lie of the land and the availability of accommodation. Slightly worryingly, they had been expecting us for the last couple of weeks so were kind of on stand-by.
We were still just over three hours away but decided to go for it … and with the general instructions of ‘Drive south on the Hume to Seymour, turn left and drive for twenty five minutes to Yea, then south for an hour to Lilydale. Phone us from Yarra Glen’
The drive down the Yarra Valley was particularly beautiful. There was controlled burning taking place and the low sunlight was filtering through a haze of blue smoke. This effect, combined with the spectacular forest on either side of the road, with its mature gum trees and huge tree ferns was some of the nicest habitat we’d seen on the trip.
I stopped to try to get a shot or two but stopping in Australia is quite difficult. Anyway we pulled in and I wandered back a few hundred yards to try and get a bit of a flavour of some of the views we’d seen on the way down the road.
I too k a shot or two of an old gum tree which had been turned into a memorial with plastic flowers and a cross nailed on to it. Obviously someone had driven into it at some stage.
Back near the car, I saw a cd lying on the ground and picked it up … it had a bit of surface grime, which I wiped on the trousers, stuck it in the player in the car and we had Puff Daddy for background as we completed this leg of the trip.
Well we followed the directions and then got some more local directions round to Bayswater. After stopping in for a couple of bottles at Safeway’s on the way, we turned the corner to find Ant and Bev at the end of their drive waiting for us. It has to be said that the mobile phone made all the difference and saved a lot of flapping around in the final stages.
We got there at about 7.40 had a beer and a general catch-up on the verandah before heading out for a steak at a café type place which also had a ‘Pokies’; basically loads of what used to be one armed bandits but are now electronic gaming machines. They are everywhere in Oz and no self-respecting town goes with out some venue which advertises the presence of Pokies.
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Diary Photos
| 23rd Nov 2005 |
| Gums |
| In Yarra Glen |
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| 23rd Nov 2005 |
| Roadside grave |
| In Yarra Glen |
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