Melbourne Trip

After 3 days in Melbourne catching up with people and sight-seeing we headed on our way back home. We stopped off at Taras' aunt Judy's in Melton for coffee and a chat before the long road ahead. We drove for 170km (105 miles) before our nights stop over in Bendigo. Our base for the night was a cabin on a campsite. It was beautiful and peaceful and the stars were so bright as there was little light pollution from nearby large cities.

Day 7
After breakfast at the famous 'Beechworth Bakery' we headed towards Nerrandera via Echuca, the only reason for this slight detour being it also had a 'Beechworth Bakery'. Now, I hasten to add I am not advertising for the Beechworth Bakery (even though I've mentioned it three times in the same paragraph) but they make great bakery items. Beechworth Bakery - Australia's Greatest Bakery!! (where's my cheque Tom O'Toole??) Anyway, I'm rambling so I'll shut up. I'm really glad we stopped off in Echuca as it turned out to be a really interesting place. In 1854 after being surveyed it very quickly became Australia's largest inland port and paddle steamers ferried supplies around the interior of Australia along the Murray River. In the early 1900's trains took over and Echuca's main industries were agriculture and tourism.
Step beyond the main road of the modern town and it feels like you're walking on to the film set of an old western movie. The streets have troughs for the horses, the blacksmith is working, although these days he's making tourist items, and the river is still full of paddle steamers.




After lunch at the aforementioned bakery, we carried on our drive and our next stopping point was Jerilderie. A quaint little town, once frequented by the infamous Ned Kelly and his gang. On 10th February 1879 the Kelly gang held up the bank of New South Wales getting away with the princely sum of £2140 and holding thirty towns people hostage and locking the police away in their own cells! How audacious!!

We carried along the very straight roads with seemingly the same background for hundreds of kilometres. I fell asleep many times during this stretch of the drive, though, thankfully for Taras I wasn't at the wheel at the time!

After 441km (274 miles) we finally arrived in Narrandera where we stayed with Taras' friend Lisa and her husband Mark for the night. I had been told Narrandera was home to two sheep and a post office and very little else but I was pleasantly surprised to find it was quite a sizeable town. We chatted for hours and had a barbecue, that makes four now in my entire time in Australia - where do you Aussies get the reputation for having barbie's every night??

Day 8

Homeward bound. After a walk around the town with Lisa and her adorable border collie, Sam, we left Narrandera and travelled through Gundagai and Goulburn (the one with the big sheep - check last years blog!)

After clocking up a total of 2313km (1437 miles) from door to door we were home again, very tired but glad we'd managed such a trip and seen lots more of Australia than we would have done on a 90 minute flight. As a point of interest, if I had driven around the borders of England and Wales, hugging the coast where possible, I would have covered roughly the same distance.