Monday: Gundagai to Melbourne – 506km
Ok, so its day two of our adventure. I’m sitting in the passenger seat of the road trip car. Listening to the vast selection of music we have, and putting down my best recount of the days activities so far for you all to salivate over.
Today we had a late start. We packed and got ready to leave Gundagai at 9.30am but this was not without a minor setback. Just as we were departing from the caravan park, we found that the car would not start. Initially we pondered the idea of a flat battery, as the motor would not kick over at all. We approached the caravan attendant for assistance and found that the caravan park owner was quite unhelpful, telling us instead of offering assistance to “call the NRMA” as he didn’t want to ruin his car from helping?
Anyway, just as the NRMA arrived, we had the car started. He conducted a few tests, but found that the battery and alternator are charging fine. Leading us to assume that it is another intermittent problem. In the mean time, we are having success starting the car in neutral, and at some point will investigate further if the problem continues.
No great road trip is without some issues!
After we left the caravan park, we had breakfast at the historic bridge at Gundagai and snapped a few pictures. It seems to be a current occurance that the signs “Danger keep out” and “Do not Cross” seem to translate to “Ross, please come over and explore the dangerous surroundings”.
From there we travelled south to Holbrook, and climbed the historic HMAS Otway (the last remaining fibreglass submarine in Australia – Middle of Australia miles from the nearest ocean or river). We didn’t actually read the signs of why they put it there, however a brief google search should reveal some results. After numerous shinanigans and photo’s ( Noteably of Pete’s large torpedo and scoping the horizon on the Otway), we travelled to Albury for Lunch at Noor’s famous Cafe Victor, finding the name had been changed to La Porchetta (What a shock).
After a nice Italian lunch of pizza & pasta we scoped the shops of Albury for a 3.5mm stereo extension lead. During this activity it became apparent that this country town has an abundance of very fine Australian talent wandering around. We took the liberty of walking the entire main street to ensure that we “admired” all of the err… township’s attractiveness, especially on a 32 degree day!
Now currently 218 km away from Melbourne.
We stopped for some more gas as it was only 49.9c/l and re stocked with lollies. Noor found us a cheap hotel on the laptop and booked it online. Drove for another few hours and arrived in Melbourne right on 5:00pm. There was a fair amount of traffic about but we eventually we made it into the main street of Melbourne with the help of some intuition and the Navman. Found the hotel but it didn’t have an parking so we circled the block and dropped the car in an underground carpark. We then carried our bags up to the hotel and found our room.
It’s a typical cheap hotel room, we’ve got 4 bunk beds, shower and toilet. It’s 2 storeys up and we’ve got a decent view of the main street. The best thing about it would be the sound proofing on the windows. Looked like they’ve screwed an additional panel to the existing window. After a bit of a lie down, some Pepsi and a few episodes of Arrested Development it was time to find some food for the night.
We walked the streets of Melbourne in search of Taco Bill, a Mexican Restaurant, whilst Pete was going nuts taking photos. The shops here put effort into the shopfront displays, plenty of fashion and jewellery on display. We passed the setup of some type of movie or advertisement where they had all their camera gear & lights setup in the main street. A few laps of the block and we found the infamous Taco Bill.
At first we couldn’t get a table but just as we were leaving the waitress chased us down and invited us back in. The place had incredible atmosphere, highly decorated with Mexican memorabilia. At this time it was 9:00pm when we ordered, we were starving. Ross was hallucinating that he was actually in Mexico and survived through the 30minute wait by nibbling on some corn chips and dip. Dinner arrived and it was dispersed in about 6:48 seconds but it was worth it.
