Day 25 - Echuca to Home :-(

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This morning, with a heavy heart (and a much lighter wallet than 3 weeks ago), I packed up the tent for the final time and headed towards home.

Echuca to Bendigo
The road out of Echuca starts off being very flat, and the countryside gradually becomes more undulating as Echuca is left further behind. After making a right-hand turn in the middle of a little town called Rochester (it has been claimed that this was named after Jack Benny's man-servant but I've been unable to verify this) the hills become more... umm... hilly until finally Bendigo comes into sight in all its golden glory.
By my usual process of randomly riding the streets I found a nice little cafe called "The Wine Bank". This is a wine bar and retail outlet operating from a heritage listed former bank building where I relaxed at a sidewalk table with a coffee and a rather large slice (chunk?) of delicious blueberry and apple cinnamon teacake, while I watched the workers rushing past during their lunch breaks.

Bendigo to Home
The remainder of the ride home was uneventful, apart from a stop for a late lunch at Gisborne. I was pleased to be passing through the city before the peak hour traffic appeared, but it was still a noticeably different experience to the traffic that I had encountered during the bulk of the past 3 weeks (apart from that quick visit to Sydney). The Monash Freeway was very much as I remembered, with the roadworks and poor surface, but at least the traffic continued to flow fairly well at that time of the afternoon.


Distance Travelled Today - 290 km


Total Distance Travelled - 5010 km



Reflections on the trip
Twenty-five days ago the idea of writing a daily blog seemed like a bit of fun and a good way to avoid the tedium of finding and sending the obligatory postcards from remote locations. As the trip progressed, however, it developed into quite a challenge, due to both lack of available Internet facilities and the peaks and troughs of literary inspiration. Each day as I roamed the backroads of our sunburnt country I faced the pressure of finding that one perfect photo opportunity to encapsulate the day on the blog. There were days when I came close to deciding that it was all too difficult and that I should just focus on travelling and enjoying the sights. But then I'd recall some of the comments that were made on the blog and I'd remember that somewhere back in the 'real' world my friends and family were actually taking an interest in my adventure. And so the blog continued as I traversed the sweeping plains and the ragged mountain ranges of this wide brown land.

Thanks to all of you for sharing my trip with me and for the comments that made it a little more enjoyable.

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