Things On A Pole.

Fantastical trees lined Goulburn's street.  We left early, in anticipation of unplanned stops along the way.

Rolling green hills marched beside the Hume Highway, dotted with fluffy white sheep and jutting outcrops of grey granite.  Long valleys lay patchworked with flourescent canola crops, splattered by cloud shadows.  The car shed functions with unpredictable abandon: here the parking brake ceased to work, there the air conditioning gave up the ghost, now we were stuck in economy mode which condemned us to chug up the hills at 80-90km, keeping company with trucks while everyone we passed on the downhills zoomed past us to the top.

Lacking a parking brake, I found parking spots that faced downhill into gutters and lunched in Albury where we could get parking chocks at Supercheap Auto.  The parking brake came on when I applied it manually, but the citreon had long ago lost its status as a trusted life partner.

By 4pm we were in Wangaratta, at the Central Motor Inn where the room smelled of cigarettes and they charged an extra $20 for the single bed.  I paid.  The mother-daughter bond did not run deep enough to share a bed.

The Central Motor Inn was not busy.

Mist drifted through the trees below the motel parking lot when I went out early in the morning. 

BD found a cafe within walking distance, where elderly locals crammed the tables and the staff were run ragged with a sudden order of 15 bacon and egg rolls.  They delivered a single cappucino to our table and forget the rest of the order until I went to remind them,  triggering a flurry of apologies and the rapid delivery of raisin toast, scones with jam and cream, and the second cappucino.

Off we went. taking risks and turning the car on and off with wild abandon.   In Seymour we stopped at the tourist information centre ostensibly to use the amenities but in reality to find out a little bit more about the helicopter on a pole.    Turns out there was a whole Vietnam War memorial walk which we didn't have time to appreciate and had to put on the ever-growing come-back-to-later list.

I've started a new category alongside Big Things.  We now also seek out Things On A Pole.

The beginning of Seymour's Vietnam War walk.

In Melbourne we lunched at the Nightcap Hotel on the premise that if the car didn't start at least we could just schlep our stuff in from the car park when came time to check in.  Our room was up one flight of stairs despite being requested as ground level but BD broke all sorts of PBs and handled the stairs with slow-motion aplomb.  If I'd had a rope I could have gotten her to haul our bags up over the handrails but alas, ropes were non-existent and I had to get everything to the room the old-fashioned way.

The Nightcap gave us two free drinks at the attached Excelsior Hotel.  Ensconced rapunzel-like in our upstairs room with rain splattering against the window we eschewed the free drinks and settle for breakfast cereal for dinner, with motel tea and biscuits to round off the feast.

Welcome to Melbourne's miserable winter weather.  Yay.