Gundagai to Home

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NOTE:We arrived home on Wednesday the 5th of July. Just catching up on the final blog post!



Oh dear, the walls in our Gundagai motel were paper thin! Before we turned the light out we could hear snoring from the room on the right hand side of our room. That seemed to settle down after we put our books aside to go to sleep, but then we were woken by bouts of coughing from the room on the other side of us during the night. We haven’t done badly though as last night is the first time we have been aware of noises from adjacent rooms.

So many motels/short-stay apartments and all so different! Some big, some vast, some small. And the showers! Walk-in showers, regular showers with screens and some with the corner cut off … even though the bathroom seemed plenty big enough for a regular shower?? Rain showers, power showers and standard shower heads. GREAT water pressure and terrible water pressure. But this morning, this morning … it was the dance of the shower curtain. Ugh, I hate a shower curtain that wants to stick onto your legs while you shower. So, the dance of the shower curtain it was … accompanied by the ooh, aaargh song of hot and cold running water!!

Today we clocked up another 486 kilometres driving from Gundagai to Home Sweet Home, but first we started with a cooked breakfast at the Niagara Café. On our walk last night we spotted this American diner-styled cafe in downtown Gundagai and decided that we would splurge on a cooked breakfast on the last day of our holiday. We both enjoyed our eggs benedict to start our day. While we were eating Bernie checked our Linkt account and discovered that our Sydney toll charges had been added. The convenience of going around Sydney cost us $24.00. Worth every cent!

After breakfast we found a decent vantage point to photograph the old timber trestle bridge that used to carry trains over the Murrumbidgee River Flats. Last night in the semi-dark we found the bridge, but we were on the fenced-off side of the bridge which wasn’t at all photogenic. This morning, when we made our way down onto the flats, it was to find a work crew with a cherry picker working on the bridge but, fortunately, the bridge is very long and we were able to photograph a decent section of it without including workers in hi-viz vests!

From the flats we drove up to a lookout with a view over town. Despite the weather still being gloomy we could see the new (-ish) Sheahan Bridge that has carried the Hume Highway over the river flats since 1977, Mt Kimo, the railway viaduct that opened in 1903 (the one we just photographed), the site of the original Gundagai township, the Murrumbidgee River and Mt Parnassus. It is no wonder that the original township was washed away in the 1852 flood – it was so close to the river!!

Having established that there is more to Gundagai than the dog on the tucker box, it was time to hit the road for home. After an hour or so on the road we pulled into Holbrook because who doesn’t want to stretch their legs beside a submarine 120 kilometres from the sea? The HMAS Otway was proving to be a popular stop for families on school holidays with children swarming all over it. Our first hour on the road had been even wetter than yesterday and the cloud even lower on the hills, but … the sun was shining in Holbrook. Perfect for a short stop.

Bernie pulled off the highway to top up at the BP at Barnawatha. He had to put standard diesel in the truck … again. That is the second top-up in a row that the BP hasn’t had ultimate diesel. Very unexpected that we were able to fill-up with ultimate diesel in more remote locations, but not on the main route between Sydney and Melbourne.

We drove past a sign at a farm saying that their stock is Poll Merino. I’ve heard of Poll Hereford before and we drove past another farm a couple of weeks ago that was Poll something else. OK, so it’s not a term that only applies to cattle, it also applies to sheep BUT, what does it mean?? I used Google to satisfy my curiosity again and learnt that original wild strains of cattle were horned. Polledness is a genetic variation that causes animals within a horned breed to not develop horns. Farmers can use these polled animals to breed selectively to create a herd without horns.

Our next stop was at Woolshed Falls located in the Chiltern-Mt Pilot National Park about 10 minutes north of Beechworth. Following recent rain, there was plenty of water gushing over the falls which can be observed easily from a deck looking over the gully.

From the falls we drove into Beechworth for lunch … and a bit of reconnaissance. We knew there was much more to see in Beechworth than we had time for today, but thought we’d scout it out for a future long weekend visit. Definitely on the agenda! We queued up to buy lunch at the Beechworth Bakery because it was very, very busy due to the school holidays. One local, who was frustrated because all she wanted to do was buy a loaf of bread, said that it is busy like today every weekend when visitors flock to the town to enjoy its period charm.

Back on the road we were watching the odometer closely because Bernie noted a couple of days ago that the truck was coming up for an ‘Oh’ milestone. Seven kilometres before the Violet Town exit the truck ticked over 40,000 Ks.

We stopped for another leg stretch at the services at the Wandong-Heathcote Junction and then continued towards the city, timing the final leg of our journey to coincide with peak hour. Not great planning, but we were lucky - maybe due to the school holidays? - and the traffic wasn’t too bad. It was a little bit slow around Craigieburn with traffic merging onto the highway but, apart from that, a pretty easy run to home arriving just before sunset.

All-in-all it’s been a great road trip mainly thanks to Bernie’s efforts making 99.9% of the arrangements. Now to start planning and booking our next adventure!



Steps: 10,092 (7.11kms)

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