Adieu, Adios, Au Revoir, Goodbye & Thanks

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Waking up this morning, I felt very thirsty, then remembering the reason why, we had polished off a few bottles of bubbly last night to welcome Susan back to the Woodstock homestead. Fortunately I had taken a glass of water to bed with me last night to quench my thirst.

Andy of course was already up, no doubt tippy tappying on the laptop writing up the blog for yesterday, which of course I will be editing and adding my five penneth worth before publishing.

Before getting out of bed I reflected on yesterdays journey, no cup of tea was forthcoming from he who normally brings one to me either, so feeling thirsty thought I had better get up and see what the day has to offer. No doubt a quieter day today, a few things to be done this morning and then start making our way towards Melbourne, nearly 500 Kliks away.

The kitchen looked like the Marie Celeste, the laptop was open, the blog was part typed and there was a warm, half drunk cup of tea sitting next to it. Putting the kettle on it was not long before Helen appeared, she handed me a telephone number of the travel agent to remind me that I needed to call them as our documents for the Spirit of Tasmania had not been emailed through.

Andy eventually reappeared with some stuff from the truck, we needed to recharge our I-pods, the batteries had run down a few days before and we did not have chance until now to recharge them, and believe me they will be valuable on the 9 hour ferry trip from Melbourne to Devonport, Tasmania.

The recent rainfall had caused the lawns to put a spurt on and Helen mentioned that the lawn needed a trim, of course Andy immediately stepped into the frame and offered to cut the lawn, good old Andy I can hear you all say, but oh no don’t forget he has an ulterior motive here, cutting the lawn means that he gets to use the sit on mower!

So while Andy chugged around the garden, I sat in the kitchen and looked at the photos from yesterday and finished up the blog.

Not surprisingly Susan was late out of bed this morning, we all had a late night last night and Susan will be suffering with jet lag. All she needs to do is stay awake for the rest of the day.

In no time at all it seemed to be lunchtime and Robert appeared in the Kitchen, and told us to look at Trixie, we all looked outside and there was Trixie on the lawn with a half eaten rabbit, it seems like she cannot help herself, Trixie up to her usual tricks and into everything. Robert said she did not catch it herself she found it, just like she found a dried up old Yabbi last week.

We ate a light lunch, packed the car and it was time for our goodbyes, Andy and I had a great time at Woodstock, Helen and Robert being very hospitable, Andy enjoyed helping out with the feed and other bits on the farm, I enjoyed the rest and watching Andy work!

Just before we left Helen gave us some fresh farm eggs, magically produced by her chooks, so I have promised Caroline boiled eggs in the morning

We are grateful to Helen and Robert for putting us up and of course keeping us out of the danger zone with the Victoria fires.

We said a long goodbye to all the dogs, lots of hugs and sloppy kisses, however I am sure that they did not really know what all of our fuss was about. We were saying goodbye but they think they were just getting and extra special fuss. I expect they have forgotten us already, especially as we are not the ones that feed them everyday.

On the road to Gundagai we saw a dead fox that Robert had apparently run over yesterday in the wee hours of the morning on the way to Sydney. We went to South Gundagai for diesel, as it was the cheapest in the area, then onto the Hume Highway towards Melbourne.

Just before fuel, we went to take some photo's of the old wooden railway bridge at South Gundagai that is now derilict, but still an interesting structure. Not even trustworthy to stand on.

I felt that the journey was slow, it seemed to be taking ages to get anywhere, everytime I looked at the map we had barely done half a centimetre. There are a lot of road works on the Hume Highway, the Government are spending plenty of money on road safety and upgrading to dual carriageway. We have to slow down for the road works; the signs say 100km, then 80km, then 60km, then 40km with no apparent reason for such a variation in speeds. Listening to the truckers on UHF, they are grumbling about the ridiculous speeds although they used much harsher language than I could ever use.

Andy and I switched places giving Andy a break from driving. Before long again we were in the road works, dutifully I followed the signs and for several kilometres I had no one behind me, the traffic was so light. I reflected that if this was in England the queues would have backed up for miles we would be sat in it for hours but despite the slow speeds we were getting through it.

Back into another section of road works, I slowed right down to 40 km as per the signs request, but I could see a truck in my wing mirror coming up behind me quite fast. He was definitely not doing 40 as before long he caught me up. We came out of the road works and back onto normal speed limits; I thought he would overtake me, but no. Heading back into another set of road works I started to drop my speed again, he did not seem much interested. I said to Andy that “I have a truck bearing down on me in my mirror, he has not slowed down, in other words he was so close to the trailer I could not see the front of the truck.

Suddenly he pulled out as if to overtake me when two cars where coming as equally slowly in the opposite direction, he then pulled back in again. This guy was really bugging me. I was only travelling to the speed limits set, but this guy was determined to push me along. I refused to be bullied but I did not want to be a part of this game. I would have been quite happy to pull over if I was a slow vehicle and was holding him up, but this was far from the case.

Driving into a town called Holbrook, I noticed a submarine; yes I did say a submarine. But Holbrook is landlocked, why is there a submarine here? Well read on and I will tell you exactly why RAN Otway (Oberon class submarine apparently) is in a small town in New South Wales. Norman Holbrook was born is Southsea in the united Kingdom, on 9th July 1888 and when old enough took a position in the Royal Navy, and in 1914,he commanded a mission to sink a Turkish Battleship “The Messudiyeh” in a miniature submarine called the B11. under heavy fire managed to sink the battleship and the Navy decorated him with a Victoria Cross

The Town of Holbrook was originally called Germanton, and the in 1914 the town councillors thought this a very bad name and needed to be changed, councillor John Ross read about the daring mission Norman Holbrook had been successful on so got agreement to call the town Holbrook

Commander Holbrook made a number of visits from his home in Midhurst in West Sussex, before his death in 1976, and the relationship between the town and a RAN submarine squadron was born and continues to this day.

I pulled into the information centre where the submarine was, this at least allowed the speak freak behind me to get past.

The lady in information very kindly let us into the museum, even though she was just about to close, she said, I am in no hurry please come in. There we find out the story of the town of Holbrook.

We drove on to Warrangatta, where we had phoned ahead to secure a spot to camp for the night at a Big4. I t was a lovely warm evening so I said to Caroline, “Lets go eat” before we put the trailer up, then we can relax for the rest of the evening.
We drove in to town and found some “Sweet Chilli Noodles” that were HOT! But we surely enjoyed them.

We drove back to the site, booked and pitched, and had the rest of the evening, Skyping friends and doing the blog.

Well that’s all we can muster for today !!

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Photos

The Old wooden Bridge
The Old wooden Bridge in South Gundagai

Museum
The Submarine Museum at Holbrook

Comments

[Susan]

We havent forgotten you
Hey guys We miss you and mum and dad have not forgoteen your great company. But today you did miss a trip to temora for a field day where they where showing lots of trucks and tractors and farm machinery and talking farm stuff all day. All in the middle of a paddock with a BBQ. So Andy getting excited about a ride on mower would have been nothing today.!! Well your welcome back in Nangus at any time and we do hope your comming back. Currently you are both missing red wine wednesday on the farm. p.s - Jack is trying to shag Tricksy with no such success. He forot he has had his bits removed.- ahh men I hear you say. Have a great trip I shall read on every day. Susan