Pedal as close to metal as possible.

25 May was the date of return.  It got off to a more exciting start than we had expected when Frances found water all over the bathroom floor at about 0600.  That  had been there when I went at 0200.  I got a security dude up - check-in desk was not staffed until 0800 (!!!!!) - and it seemed to be coming out of the wall and dripping off the vanity unit.  This explained why the door frame looked to be water damaged. 

Problem not bilong youme.

We packed up to leave as soon as we got back from the QVM.  We got a trolley full of nice fruit, lots of sausages and some baked goods for lunch.  The market was still setting up before sunrise.

We had checked the route out of town and it all seemed fairly straightforward.  It got a tad bizarre around Sale (about 200 km out) as Google Maps dived off on to a  series of country roads which saved 2 km - remember that - and 2 minutes.  There was of course the potential that if we missed a turn - or took one too soon - we could do an extra 'n' kilometres and lose an hour.  Bugger it, stay on the main road.

Vic Roads or the City of Melbourne had one last sting in the tail of road signage .  As we came down Exhibition Street there were signs about road work, form one lane, and a huge flashing arrow pointing left at Lonsdale st.  Where were they going to divert us to?  As it turned out, nowhere: I just ignored the "Left lane must turn left" sign and carried on (quietly).

Many beeps from the eTag (but that is why we have it) and out we went.  As we got towards Dandenong we were very glad we were not heading in to the City.  We could not imagine doing that drive every day.
The only fly in our ointment was a few kilometres of tailback from a prang, but nothing compared to the mess of a couple of days ago.
No real idea what had gone on, but the small car (arrowed) had a stoved in front so I presume they had tail-ended another vehicle.
We had a comfort stop at Bruthen and got an apple scroll at the Bakery.  It was excellent.  Somewhere after Cann River we passed a red marker pole with 490 on it.  The Jetta trip meter said we had done 492 km  on the day - so the official distances obviously does the weird by pass around Sale to save the 2 km.  Of course they don't sign post that!

Overall we averaged almost exactly 80kph for the day.  560 kms in 7 hrs.  We possibly lost 20 minutes with comfort stops and refueling but I suspect 6:30 would be as good as it gets without seriously damaging the speed limits.  I can only recall one complete loonie on the trip, which was a guy who sat about 2 metres behind me while I doing the speed limit as I overtook someone going slightly slower.  I could see they had a strange number plate.  We I could pull in to the left lane I did so and they zoomed past showing their personalised number plate.  Richmond Football Club: all is explained.

A nice Mallacoota sunset!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Insects from pine trees

Image
This afternoon (13/1/2015) we were looking out of our sunroom and noticed a strange bit of mist.  On getting my binoculars on the case I found it to be a cloud of tens of thousand of insects.  They appeared with naked eye to be flying away, but with binoculars I thought they were circling. Here are some images In the second one it may be possible to see there are two streams coming from the top of each tree. There was a loud buzzing noise but that could just be several thousand wings. Earlier in the day Frances had been to some nearby willows and they were infested with many little black soft bodied insects.  Perhaps they shifted to the pines and were swarming? Help!! Any information welcome. A colleague, from Wamboin, had noticed a similat phenomenon, but involvng eucalypts rather than pines!  Here are the photos he took with his phone. I have consulted some expert friends.   Their responses were: I would have gone for chironomids. I rec...
Read more

A tour of the West (part 1)

Image
A friend from my time in the UN sent me some photos of her family trip along Route 66.  They did this is a large camperwagon rather than a Chevy Corvette (apparently the kids jacked up about being offered a trip in the trunk).  It seems to have been a very good trip for them and most interesting to see their photos.  It was also educational for me, as I found out the German for rocking chair (schaukelstuhl, since you ask). They did 7200 miles in 30 days - a pretty serious bit of distance. This made me think of the trips we did in 1981 when living in Denver.  Frances initiated that idea by getting a book about the National Parks of the West  and marking interesting places.  I then worked out a route on a Rand-McNally Road Atlas (GPS was unknown then  - as were iPhones, personal computers and the internet).  From memory, taking nearly the whole Summer school holidays we covered about 10,000 miles in 70 days.  Here, approximately,  are ...
Read more

Maslins beach rules

Image
Anyone who was in Adelaide in the 1970s will be having a good nudge nudge at that title.  However the beach is really nice even though it is the haunt (in Summer ) of naked people.  (As an aside one of the 'van park staff was talking to some other guests and commented that the sights on the beach in Summer were not at all exciting.)  In April it is the haunt of seniors, many of them exercising their dogs, and thus a far more attractive place. Getting to the beach was a walk of about 1km along roads, from our van.  The second half of this went past a rather daggy looking paddock with many formed ridges in it, as though it was irrigated, although a water sources wasn't evident.  The paddock got interesting towards the end as some green parrots appeared.  Thanks to Frances eye for detail we have subsequently identified these as Elegant Parrots: my first lifer for 2014.    The locale is indicated by the red lines in this mudmap: Here are the bird...
Read more