Day 248 - Submarine Town

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We had an absolutely delicious breakfast in a bakery (one ‘Full Works’, 2 x raisin toast - guess who had which) opposite the juice bar. Possibly the best fry-up ever, at least for one not cooked in an Aga. Then we drove and drove and drove. We took a more direct route back to Sydney (ie not along the coast), and some of the driving got pretty boring for the first time in Australia. Obviously much better than motorway driving in England, though, as you never know when a kangaroo or koala will provide target practice. We passed a town drawing tourists with a big sign proclaiming it to be the ‘First Inland Town in Australia’ - we didn’t realise there were any. We then came across another town with a sign up for passing tourists, this time enigmatically calling itself ‘Submarine Town’. We thought we’d investigate this, but didn’t really have to put a lot of effort in. In the middle of Holbrook was the gigantic HMAS Otway, a decommissioned Aussie submarine almost as big as the town itself and looking very out of place hundreds of miles from the coast. Why? Well because it’s the only town in the world named after a decorated submariner, of course. We think it’s an absolutely brilliant idea, and hopefully next time we visit the museum will be open.

We had a slightly worrying few minutes when we realised that Ed had (possibly) been overoptimistic on our chances of making the next town before running out of petrol. Gemma gently cajoled him into turning round, with only a handful of expletives. Before long we were back on our merry way and heard on the radio an interesting and blog-worthy though unconfirmed fact: Sydney, with its almost draconian water restrictions, has more annual rain than London, Paris or Tokyo. Probably more of interest to us than to you but there you go - we’re here primarily for the weather. Despite the best intentions of a number of truck drivers, we made it safely to Gundagai shortly after dark. Long distance truck drivers are now vying for first place with disgruntled late-night petrol station workers for first place in our bad book of occupations. They intimidate by driving their 18 wheelers about 18 inches from the rear of ‘Mr Pink’, and when they are finally allowed to overtake accidentally on purpose misjudge when they can pull back over and in so doing almost run us off the road. Kangaroos pose a danger when driving in Oz? No way. It’s these d*ckheads (sorry Mums). Long Distance Clara was never like that on Pigeon Street.

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Photos

Long Distance Clara
Courtesy of PigeonStreet.com