Day 240 - Just passing through

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After not such a great night’s sleep we managed to sleep through our alarm and woke up in a hot van, with the sun beating down on us. And the rain had stopped which was a good thing. As we started driving we got to see just how much water had fallen in the last 12 hours and saw many fields and roads flooded. It started to cloud over about an hour into the trip which made it very difficult for us to think we were in Australia - it just looked like England on a grey day, but with American-style wooden houses.

Driving through many towns it meant we got to sample a number of fantastic names for towns such as Ulladulla, Yatte Yattah and Narrawallee. And we didn’t feel the need to find out what the beach in no-nonsense-named ‘Pebbly Beach’ was like. We also enjoyed the smalltown Aussie radio stations with their ‘tell it how it is’ DJs and cringeworthy commercials (a blatant Aussie attempting an Irish accent to advertise an Irish pub). In fact a lot of the adverts remind us of English radio about 15/20 years ago - only used by small businesses such as telling the world the opening hours of a pub.

As we drive through New South Wales and then into Victoria we get the feeling that a lot of motorists travel long distances - we get reminded every 5 km that ‘Microsleeps - Kill’ and “Tired? Then a 15 minute Powernap can save your life” or ‘Stop, Revive, Survive”. Sound advice, but it gets a bit boring after a while which could almost have a quite ironic side effect.

After traveling for about 9 hours we stop in Orbost for some well needed food, fish and chips - very tasty they were too - washed down by a cup of tea. The owner of this particular place asked us if we were ‘just passing through’, which we liked the evocative sound of, before ruining it with her follow-up question wondering which part of Melbourne we were from!

Whilst talking to this woman we commented on the rain, because for the last 2 hours we had been making our way steadily through torrential rain, and she mentioned how it was a Godsend that they have been waiting a couple of months for. Well they got what they wanted, and then some, and many fields and overflow drains were flooded.

This evening’s stop was a rest stop or lay-by on the side of the road. This was a common stop for the huge lorries to stop and check their lights and whatever, which gave us noisy traffic for most of the night in between the rain again clattering down onto the metal roof.

And finally, an image that we reckon would have the ‘Wicked’ van owners cringing. At one stage, as Gemma was driving, we were listening to an Aussie version of Classic FM as Ed was typing away on the laptop. Hmmm. Not quite living the dream they market.

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