Melbourne to Goulbourn, New South Wales
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Our Best Western Hotel and Casino was conveniently located on an on ramp to the M1 motorway into town, and we headed out fairly early, for us anyway, with no breakfast. Luckily it was Saturday and traffic was light.
Melbourne is definitely an industrial town. The most industrial we’ve seen so far. We passed oil refineries and other smokestack industries and a busy port on the way in. Took a bit of maneuvering to find our way into the downtown area. Then it was time to find a hotspot.
We were blessed with a long list of possibilities but that also made it difficult because we didn’t know which one to look for. But we fairly quickly found ourselves on a street that was supposed to have a couple and lo and behold a Starbucks. The first one we’ve seen. Well, Les had to check it out, and after all, they all have hot spots in the US so we tried it. But, it turns out they didn’t have it. But Les had a $5.50 grande mocha (decaf, extra hot) which he declared was “adequate”.
We found a McDonalds’ on the way back to the van and had breakfast. Our first fast food of the trip. Back at the van we noticed we were across the street from the Optus Headquarters. Optus is a major wi-fi supplier here and Les suggested that maybe they had wireless running in their building. So I fired up my wireless finder and sure enough, they did. So we went over and sat on benches in front of the building and did our e-mail and uploaded 4 days worth of log. Had a nice instant message chat with my sister to boot.
Les wanted to call Sharon and we had to move the van so we moved to a different part of town. While he talked to her, I went for a walk and did my best to document the city via photographs. Got most of the big buildings and even came across a fashion photo shoot at the train station.
But the two overriding memories I’ll have of Melbourne are the number of smokers, especially since we’ve rarely seen them elsewhere, and the sound of jackhammers. The jackhammers were everywhere. And this on a Saturday morning too. Maybe that’s why. Our experience with road construction has been that 99.4% of every “road construction” sign we’ve come to has either had no one there, or the people that were there were sitting around. *No one* seemed to ever work on these crews. But not in Melbourne. It was jackhammer city. Roads and inside buildings.
Melbourne reminds me of Seattle. Kind of a pretty city but a much bigger feel than say Portland and more industrial. My least favorite city so far, but that’s not to say I didn’t like it. Just not as much as the others.
So a quick hour of city walk and it’s time to get going. We’ve got to get as close to Sydney as possible today and its 900km and it’s already 1:30. We headed north to get on the M31, passing out of downtown and into a long road of ethnic shops — Arabic, Indian, Turkish, you name it. It was really hopping. People everywhere, all the stores were open. Downtown Melbourne was shut down. Nothing was open. But not here. This went on for miles and miles.
We finally hit the motorway and started cruising. More rolling farmland like outside Adelaide. But wide smooth highway for a change. At Seymour we saw a sign for the Army Tank Museum and thought we’d have a look. We headed out to a little town called Puckapunyal (no I’m not making that up) where it turns out there is an army base. But, the museum is closed on Saturdays (and Mondays and Tuesdays) and we had to turn around.
A few more hours of driving. We passed the towns of Yea and Howlong which made for interesting exit signs saying “Yea Next Exit” and “Howlong Next Exit”. Sadly they went by too fast to photograph and no more stopping in the middle of the road and turning around like we used to. (If I didn’t mention it before, we have routinely been stopping in the middle of the “main highway” and standing there taking picture for 5 minutes at a stretch without seeing a car.)
We came to the town of Holbrook, which the sign outside of town described as “Sub City”. We didn’t understand that at all. This was the farthest inland we’ve been the whole trip. But sure enough, in the middle of town, there is a submarine in a little park. The HMAS Oxley to be specific. Weirdest thing we’ve seen in awhile, including the Big Lobster. We got out and took its picture and continued on, scratching our heads a bit.
A few more hours of driving and it’s starting to get late. Once again we’re treated to the golden afternoon/evening sun. Which is great. Les took a bunch of pictures out the van window at 100km/hr. (All the photos in the gallery are from the left side of the car.) But we’re still 300 km from Sydney and we really only have tomorrow to spend there. So we’re driving into the night again and will likely spend the night in a rest stop near Goulbourn. As I type this, we’re stopped in a truck rest area outside of Gundagai, where we stopped to cook beef stew since we were starving. We’ve done close to 600km today and will likely do another 100 or so before we stop. A new record.
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