The Rabbitts were finally back on the road again last week and off down to see Zoȅ, Shaun and Eddie for the first time in 9 months! Australia has been dealing with COVID outbreaks by closing state borders so we were ready in the starting blocks when the New South Wales/Victoria border opened on the 23rd. We usually take the caravan and make a bit of a holiday out of the journey but we wanted to get there quickly in case the border closed again, flying was out too because we did not want to get stuck if flights were cancelled for any reason.
The journey down to Melbourne is long but pretty straightforward apart from a ghastly section through Sydney. The freeway enters the outskirts of the city and takes a painful, crawling route along residential roads with narrow lanes for, what feels like, forever. There are often accidents and it is not unusual to hear about a truck ploughing into a house or garden. It is a stressful bit of driving especially if towing the caravan and really dangerous for the poor people living there with trucks thundering past all hours of the day and night. Not any more though, while we have all been confined to barracks the Northconnex tunnel was completed. Instead of the one and a half hour schlep through Sydney (sometimes longer) the journey through the tunnel took 7 minutes! It was wonderful.
Gundagai was our choice for an overnight stop on the way down because it is just over half way and right beside the freeway. The only thing I knew about Gundagai was that the Dog on the Tuckerbox poem was set there. There is a motorway stop at the Dog on the Tuckerbox with a statue of said dog sitting on the tuckerbox just like in the poem. You see people taking photos of their dogs sitting on plastic lunch boxes in front of the statue, all very cute. Or so I thought until I read the original poem, the line actually reads 'The dog shat on the tuckerbox' not sat as everyone thinks, not so cute now then.
We had never visited Gundagai itself and were pleasantly surprised to discover it was extremely nice town surrounded by hills and with an interesting past. The early settlers chose to ignore warnings from the indigenous residents about flooding and built the town on the banks of the Murrumbidgee river.They suffered a couple of floods in the 1840s but the town was completely destroyed by a devastating flood in 1852. Over half the buildings in the town were swept away and over 75 people died. Two indigenous men, Yarri and Jacky, took to their canoes and saved 69 of the townsfolk.
Gundagai still floods but the town is located further up the slopes and the road is elevated as it crosses the flood plain. The original rail and road bridges can still be seen running alongside each other, it is hard to imagine how they ever supported cars, let alone trains. We stayed in The Bushman's Retreat Motel because we had Monty with us so were limited to pet friendly accommodation. It was ok, clean enough but really more of a tradies stopover than a family hotel.
When we crossed into Victoria everything changed. There was a serious Covid outbreak in Melbourne and the state has had far tougher restrictions than we have been used to, They were successful though and had gone 30 days without a case by the time we turned up. The rule demanding mask wearing outdoors had only been relaxed the day before we arrived and masks were still mandatory inside any buildings. It made us realise how lucky we have been living in our little Covid free bubble in Port Stephens.
After a wonderful few days at Zoȅ's we hit the road again for the long drive back. This time we had booked an Aibnb in Dalton, just outside Gunning and only 15 minutes from the freeway. There is not much in Dalton but the accommodation was splendid, a little completely off grid cottage to ourselves. It felt like we were in the middle of nowhere when we were actually only 10 minutes drive from Gunning and dinner at the pub.
We are back home now, it is 33C and I can hear a jet ski on the water so it is beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.
