Melbourne explorations (pt 1)

 We are  back in Melbourne with a view to exploring areas for purchasing an apartment (or, but very unlikely, a house).  The got an early interesting spell with a lot of firies and such at the smoking remains of a commercial building in Cann River.  I didn't get a photo of that and decided it would be ghoulish to turn round to get one.  However this has appeared on the Mallacoota Community FB Group so I repost it.

Here is the text from that post:

Yesterday at 4:04am the pager dropped for a fire in Cann River.

The iconic Squires Cafe had caught fire. It was many hours before the fire was fully extinguished and unfortunately the building was totally destroyed.

Brigades from Cann Valley, Mallacoota, Bemm River, Marlo and Orbost worked hard to extinguish the cafe and prevent further spread of fire to the adjacent Motel.

I would like to thank all Brigades and their members for helping out the Cann River community. Also, a big thank you to Bairnsdale BA support for looking after the BA teams gear, Cann River SES who along with VicPol managed traffic keeping our firefighters safe, Sergeant Cochrane who assisted alerting the Motel occupants to evacuate the Motel safely, Cann River AV who monitored our firefighters health on scene, Cann River Bakery who, with a moments notice, provided food and drinks for all attending and the Fire Investigation team from Bairnsdale as well as Commander Tomkins and BASO Cousin for their support. The Mallacoota truck rolled back into town around 5:00pm.

There was certainly a lot of smoke around as we came by at about 1030.

As usual we swapped drivers in Bairnsdale after refueling.  I then tried to get my phone to generate a contact with the car: this turned out to be difficult because I had forgotten that this only happens - for reasons unclear to me - from one of the two USB ports.  Frances remembered it, fortunately.  And we had it "going" by Stratford.  The rabbit ears reflect it starting off by only giving some of the directions, but by the time we had bypassed Sale it was again functioning properly.

Back on the Princes Highway and the roadworks had advanced in the 7 months since we were last here.

This bridge is possibly carrying the old road or the thoroughfare labelled on Google maps as Schultz Lane E.  Either way it seems a touch over-engineered.

The road works continued and as usual there were many kilometres of low speed limit with no sign of any work going on.  Rather than put up a sign costing $100 here they had a graphic on the back of a truck costing $?0,000.  Hopefully they won't leave it there at the end of the day.

Entering Rosedale I finally got a photo of one of the "Middle of Everywhere" signs used quite effectively as marketing by Wellington Shire.  Incidentally, I had realised where the Sale airport, home of the Roulettes, was located, thinking it was South of the town rather than West.

Getting closer to Melbourne I was back driving and marvelling at the density of 3pm traffic going the other way.  Difficult with the sun and the barrier to get a snap.

Walking back to our accommodation in Drummond St after tea at daughter's apartment I was impressed with the lights on this building near Lygon St.