May 24th: Drinking and Driving

Day 51 (Day 26 in Australia)

I woke up this morning just before 7am. We were in the 29th different hotel (excluding planes, a boat and family homes) on this trip. Definitely the best shower* since leaving home.

We had planned to visit the Rocky Hill War Memorial about 20 minutes from our hotel because the Aussies are good at them and it’s on a hill with “spectacular views all around”.

However, when we drew the curtains we were faced with a wall of white. Very thick fog. Not going to see a spectacle in any direction. Plus we learned it is closed on weekdays!

Fearing our 440km journey might be done at 10kph rather than 110kph we set off. As it happened after about 15-20km the fog lifted and it soon became a beautifully bright day.

I had read in the hotel of “three pretty villages” nearby that were worth a visit. Two were back the way we came but the 3rd was directly on our route and just 50km away. 

As we left the highway a sign read “Gunning: pop. 1000” and my mind immediately thought it was an unlikely round number and what if someone died? As we reached the village another sign read “Welcome to Gunning: pop. 543”. That is a) some dreadful catastrophe that had befallen the village in the last 3 minutes, and b) impressive sign writing to update it so quickly.**

Anyway, it was quite pretty. Very ‘Wild West’; quite tired and run down but with a thriving little coffee shop. Here are some photos:

Australia is waaay ahead of us for EV infrastructure.
I like the mix of the charger against the tired old shop building.

Post office and WW1 memorial. 
So many from such a small population 110 years ago. 

Poor photo but zoom in to see how thick this rose
stem is. How old must it be?

Paintings of old cars on the side of an old garage.
Still pretty busy today. 

Unusual door arrangement 

Nearly antiques?

Not a great photo but I was neatly run over
 taking it so you had better enjoy it!

After coffee and a change of driver the next section of the journey was uneventful save for me persuading Julie to practice using cruise control. Long straight stretch of road without a car in sight in front or behind so a good time to experiment.

An hour and a half later, we came off the Hume Highway in search of fuel and food. Tarcutta (pop. 446 though they must all have been on holiday) was the chosen place. It is well known as a truck drivers stop and the park there has a memorial to all the ‘truckies’ who have died on that highway.

A lot of them! (Photo from Wikipedia)

Our 14th fill-up of the trip (excluding seversl more that Phil did) was followed by an attempt to check tyre pressures. As I pressed the button the dodgy looking hose parted company with the bit on the end barely avoiding taking my right ear off. I decided the tyres “looked fine”!

Julie wanted to look inside a junk antiques shop where I enjoyed a chat with the elderly owner who wanted to discuss the future of motoring. His theory was we’d soon all be in drones driven by “helium and magnets”. Some of the finer details of his reasoning were beyond me, else you’d all be getting the benefit of them too.

With me behind the wheel the final 90 minutes to Milawa was completed in, er, 90 minutes and we arrived at our hotel just after 3pm.

The plan had been to visit the Brown Brothers Winery (directly opposite) tomorrow morning but as we had arrived earlier than planned we did it today. The tour gave us a taste of 5 wines each. It was hard to chose so we used the Countdown stem and went for “2 from the top and 8 from anywhere you choose Carol”.

After 10 glasses of wine I recklessly drove the 20 yards to our hotel and we checked in for the night***. A very nice meal at the hotel (and wine) and then back to our room to write this post in bed while drinking a beer. Cooth? Me??

Julie checking menu over a cup of tea on a big chair

We head back to Melbourne tomorrow to stay with Phil & Carolyn again. Our Saturday evening entertainment may mean the next post might be a day or so late. Can you guess what it might be?

Stay tuned!

* My shower marking criteria: room, height of shower, force of water, temperature (with subcategories: ease of regulating and speed at reaching desired temperature) and drainage (ideally water goes down a hole and not all over the floor).

** Wiki says the population is 659 so we can conclude that either they just make it up or nobody actually knows (or cares). We should all agree not to lose sleep over it.

*** It amounted to one small glass of wine and we were in the middle of nowhere!