22 November 2013 - Mokoan Rest Area, Hume Highway, near Benalla, Victoria

Yesterday turned out to be a real bonus; the fine weather allowed me to do a last minute load of washing and we did some more spring cleaning. Another bonus was the fact that our man Alfredo had telephoned the night before to tell us that the squabs were ready for collection; we decided that he was anxious to secure the balance of the money. We arrived mid-morning and spent a delightful twenty minutes or so with him as he stuffed everything into place and entertained us with his own immigration story; how he came to Australia from Chile about forty years ago and why he made that decision. We left feeling a whole lot of love for him, albeit with a lighter wallet.

We picked up car seat covers for the landcruiser from KMart as part of the general spruce up everything is getting. Is this not always the way? You build that pergola on, just before placing the house on the market; that pergola you have been promising to do all the twenty years or so you have lived in the house. Typical!

The first of the Ashes cricket series commenced yesterday, so we watched intermittently as the Aussies were knocked out one after another, suggesting a repeat of the battle held in England earlier this year. I thought it just as well since we were unlikely to received reliable television reception over the next little while as we travel north.

We set the alarm for this morning but were still awake and up long before it went off. We would have been out the caravan park gates had we not become entangled in conversation with the gentleman de-camping adjacent to us. It was the first time we had spoken with him, even though we had lived for several days right next door. A shame really because he was such a nice man, heading back to Western Australia to sell his caravan before returning to collect his custom made off-road jobbie. But such is life on the road; you meet some wonderful people, and leave them just as quickly.

So in the end we were not too early at all by the time we pulled into the Dunlop yard at Melton, whereupon the junior mechanic fitted the two new tyres and juggled the rest, all of which took him an hour and a half! Still, he has only been there for seven years and these things do take time, don’t they? However, apart from the fact that Chris was left to supervise the lengthy job and I continued ploughing through my current novel, we were charged only for the tyres and no labour at all, so one cannot really complain.

We had arranged with the auto-electrician up the road to have a small repair done and made it clear that we had the tyre re-fit scheduled in first. Alas, when we finally arrived at about 11 am, we were told that he was very busy, that we would have to leave the rig there and he would fit the job in when he could. Apart from the fact there is nowhere to go in this remote corner of Melton’s industrial precinct, this did not suit our travel itinerary at all, so we decided to abandon the repair and head off to Queensland.

And so we have, on up the Hume Highway, parts of which we have not travelled before, because when we did last come this way, we detoured in to all the small towns along the way and explored the area thoroughly as we do. Today we stopped at the Great Divide Rest Area about thirty kilometres north of the state capital’s boundary for lunch, a familiar watering hole where we had once long ago stopped overnight and then came on here to the Mokoan Rest Area which is also familiar to us, stayed at in March 2012. There is water in the lake, but it is far in the distance, but of course the area is the Winton Wetlands, an attempt to regenerate an irrigation scheme long abandoned. The farmland all about is all quite dry and summer well on its way. The road and rail noise have changed little from our last visit, however this will suit us well before we press on again tomorrow.

Tonight we will have to make a decision about our route north; whether to travel via Sydney and on up the coast or to cut inland through Bathurst and Dubbo or similar and emerge toward the coast far to the north. Chris will have to telephone an “interested party” tonight near Newcastle and see whether they are more than tyre-kickers. Who knows where we will be tomorrow night?

In the meantime the sun is shining, it is quite warm and I have no qualms about camping free beside the road. And better still for Chris; we have television reception and the English cricket team is not doing very well at all. Oh dear!