After a bit over a week in 505 where I feel we had settled in, it was back to Mallacoota. The way out to the M1 looked to be quite simple: Punt and Toorak roads (even though a friend reckons that Toorak Rd is the slowest road in Melbourne). The main issue at 0800 on a Sunday morning was the 40kph limit through the commercial area (with potential for trams to really slow things down). Next time I shall try going Malvern Rd to Glenferrie Rd.
The drive out was in fact no problem at all. I have just measured it on Google Earth and it is 6km, and took us 15 minutes (so at 24kph is definitely slow - getting close to the Roads Vic ideal of following a man with a red flag). The M1 was a cruise apart from the usual changes of speed limit for no apparent reason - perhaps
- Vic Roads are thinking of road works sometime in the future or
- someone did something in the past but couldn't be bothered collecting the speed limit signs afterwards?
We swapped drivers at Moe and decided to try the route from there via Heyfield and Maffra thus avoiding the slogs through Traralgon (pass me the enema tube) and Sale (Australia's official Museum of On-road Traffic Lights). A few kilometres out of Moe we got some nice views of a fair proportion of the La Trobe River being sent skywards through the cooling towers of the Yallourn Power Station
You have to distribute the power somehow, so there is a good set of pylons near the power station.
A little further down the road - possibly North Yallourn - we passed the Old Brown Coal Museum. I an 50% interested in calling in there (the other 50% of me in concerned that there will be such BS in there that I will get arrested).
This is the first time I have seen canola growing in the La Trobe Valley.
Welcome to Heyfield. I used to follow a blog post about the Heyfield Birders but think the author switched to Facebook so I lost contact. Seemed an OK small town although we didn't get into the centre.
There are two routes to dodge Sale the longer of these - which is less flood prone - starts about 2 km out of Stratford and goes through Maffra. It passes Tinamba as does today's route.
The shorter route starts 11km past Stratford: both of them go through Traralgon. Today Google Maps even avoided Stratford (although it did traverse a creek on the outskirts thereof with I think would flood in a decent fog). No problemo on this day.
Filled up with fuel in Bairnsdale and on on down the road. I was behind the wheel and was feeling tired so Frances took over again. That meant I got to take a snap of an errant boulder at Drummer> a few weeks back in a rainy period it was out in the middle of the road!
There was a mass display of Wattles along the road , particularly from Cann River onwards. The Epacris heath was noy as evident as it had been on the way out.
We got back to Mallacoota at 1420 hrs. I suspect the diversion via Heyfield added about 15 minutes to the trip so we will keep to the M1, dodging Sale, as a default. The long diversion is more scenic, but also less relaxing due to to the constant changes of route (and if one got stuck behind a caravan .....).
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