20/02/2022 Bye Bye Bunnies and the Sad Story of Fruit: Bordertown

We packed the car and polished up the flat, making sure the bunnies' cage was spick and span.  The bunnies knew something was afoot and made themselves as underfoot as possible.  I tempted them with my 6-day-old Valentines Day rose.

 After the rose I tempted them with traitorous treats and locked them back into their cage, saying a final bunny good-bye and heading out the door.  Our time in Melbourne was over and we were on the road again.

A four-lane highway delivered us north-west via a conglomerate of road works, detours, and far too many impatient drivers for a Sunday morning.  We came across the small town of Dadswell which is reknowned for the Big Koala.  We stopped to say hello, as you do when you come across Big Things.

Hello!

We had lunch beside the lake at Ballarat, expecting peace and being sadly disappointed due to the Ballarat Cycling Classic taking up a good half of the road and all of the picnic tables being used by the (I presume) supporters of those who were participating.

Before we got to Ballarat we had a long discussion about what to have for lunch.  Roger was all for the bread and cheese which was all we had left in our food box.  I was not so keen, so we stopped at Coles in Ararat and bought bananas, tomatoes, grapes, and butter.  Then we sat down beside the lake in Ballarat and realised we already had cold left-over pizza for lunch so we had that instead.  We nibbled on the grapes and decided to keep the rest of the fruit for later.

Along came a big quarantine sign, reminding us that we couldn't carry fruit or vegetables into South Australia.

We sat down to eat as much fruit as we could.  There were several other groups of travelers at our rest stop.  Coincidentally all of them were gobbling snacking on fruit.

There's only so much fruit a man (or woman) can eat in one sitting.

Sadly, we were unable to eat all of our fruit and were reduced to begging other travelers to take it before casting it adrift in the bin.  Thus it was that our customary border-crossing excitement was tinged with the sadness of losing a quantity of very nice fruit and the prospect of a fruitless lunch tomorrow.

While it's grape to cross the border, it's not the same without my fruit.  The grief is about to send me bananas.  Ok, I'll stop now.

We passed Hay-Henge along the way.

Unfortunately by the time we got to Bordertown it was too late to remedy the fruit and vegetable situation: indeed, our efforts to find an evening meal were almost fruitless as it was.  We eventually found sustenance at the local road-house and finally had our quota of fruit and vegetables (if you count potatoes as vegetables and sweet chilli sauce as fruit) (which we do).

Grieving grapes and bananas, we retired for the night.

Home for the night: Bordertown Caravan Park.