Australia

We left for Australia and arrived two days later I love the idea of travelling forward in time but the 14 hours on the plane were not pleasant. Not bad, but still if one was claustrophobic the trip would have been hell. When we arrived, we had little trouble getting our car.

My son had advised me that when I rented a car, I should choose the most popular and cheapest model on the list. I did that and by the time we arrived at the rental agency, all of those cars had been rented out, so we were offered an upgrade for free, which we accepted. So we got a slightly bigger car, with more seats and more luggage room.

The tactic may not work every time, but the last four times we have done this, at popular, national car rental agencies we have received an upgrade. It has not worked when we went with local car rental companies.

The last time we were in Melbourne with my son, we did not have google maps and we had to rely on my ability to navigate, needless to say, we got lost and took three hours to find our way out of Melbourne and on the Hume Highway on our way to Mansfield. This time thanks to Apple and Google Maps we had no problems. This time we went through the backcountry for about an hour before we connected to the Hume highway. 

The scenery on the way reminded me of Kamloops area of BC. We stopped at a town called Yea for a pit stop and some food. Yea, like all small towns in Australia, has public toilets that are accessible and free for locals and tourists to use. I have never found a dirty public toilet in any of the small towns I visited in Australia. Canadian towns should take note.  

On the way to Yea, we drove along the Whittlesea road through a small town called Flowerdale which is in the foothills of The Great Dividing Range, and in the upper catchment of the Goulburn River system. We passed through some beautiful farmland and rolling hills as we travelled.

After resting in Yea, we drove on through more beautiful scenery as we moved into the high country past Mansfield to Sawmill Settlement.  Sawmill Settlement is a very small community of fewer than 90 people so everyone knew we were coming and as we entered the community there was a sign that welcomed us to the community.

We entered Sawmill Settlement to see and we stopped to read our warm welcome,  and then we drove to my daughter and her family home and arrived at about three o’clock after a very pleasant drive. 

I will talk about the rest of the trip and the fire situation that faced many of the areas we were in a subsequent post. Right now I am trying to get over my Jet lag.