Stop eight, nine and ten

It certainly has been an interesting few weeks since I left Candelo, but definately not plain sailing. I have to say in the last week I have been very tempted to pack up and go home but pride and determination has won the day.

After arriving in Lakes Entrance from Candelo at 3am, I found myself at the YHA with no duty manager to meet me (as planned). This lead to a morning on the beach in my tent and a rather pissed off conversation to said duty manager the next morning. A free nights accomodation and breakfast was thrown in and I sulked off to bed. For those who do not know anything about Lakes Entrance - it is a retirement town where sixty plus city slickers go to die. I realised this as soon as the only pub in town turned out to be an RSL. If it wasn't for the Bachelor's party I ended up joining it would have been a pretty wild night on the pokies but thankfully I ended up drinking until 4am and playing 'Guitar Hero'. Which, predictably I am not very good at. *accepts calmly*

There is a Shell Museum though and really you can't go wrong with a Shell Museum... 90,000 shells!

A hasty departure from 'The Lakes' lead me to Maffra . I arrived in Maffra early Sunday afternoon only to discover I had missed the biggest night in town - The Maffra Mardi Gras (Slightly less homosexuality pride and more crafts and 'tropical' cocktails - but I digress). So, it was a trip to the Maffra Vintage Car Museum instead. Is anyone noticing a theme here? My repressed and slightly shameful love of pre 1970's Holden cars was released and much drooling occured.

Via the lovely towns of Sale and Morwell I then headed off to Madalya. To say that Madalya is remote is like saying Sydney is busy. Even the people who lived in the nearest town of Yarram didn't even know where I was going when I told them. Madalya is essentially a community filled with (8!) retired hippies that grow vegetables and protest against logging.

I will try and point out the good things about my stay here:

*Lots of leftist politcal books
*Fresh Pistachio nuts
*Fresh Garlic
*Three other WWOOF-ers from Japan, France and Australia who all smoked cigarettes

Bad things:

*The hosts
*Their friends
*The constant onslaught of their particular brand of the-whole-world-is-screwed philosophies.

So, five days later I finally managed to get a lift down the mountain, avoid being hit by logging trucks (who I can honestly say where aiming at the protest cars as we drove passed) and popped on a train to Melbourne!

Civilisation!

To be continued..

---

---