COMPLETING THE CIRCLE

Monday, 16 September 2019

Coffee at the Dog on the Tuckerbox

Barramundi (and bubbles) at Yering Station

We have completed this year’s circle and arrived in Melbourne today.  We departed the Lake Macquarie region early on Saturday morning, with Moss Vale our intended destination for that day.  All went well on the motorway south to Sydney, crossing the Hawkesbury River along with many other vehicles.  Travelling through Pennant Hills, Sydney, went well and TomTom soon had us back on the motorway.  We had only travelled a short distance when TomTom said “Exit the motorway,” so we did and started wending our way through Sydney streets, with no real idea where we were or actually headed.  It was at this time that TomTom decided it was all too hard and lapsed into a coma.  Great!  No where to pull off, no idea which direction signs we should be following.  Discovered that TomTom had actually run out of power as the USB plug connector had failed.  Pulled over as soon as possible, retrieved iPad from caravan plus new connector and continued on our way, with much muttering about TomTom’s weird directions.  We discovered the next day that there had been a fatal accident on the motorway, hence the deviation directions.  Travel along the motorway south of Sydney was very, very slow (about 25km/h), with much discussion among the truckies, some of whom have a very limited vocabulary!  We eventually arrived at Moss Vale for our overnight stop.  A rather strange caravan park in a lovely town.  Set on the side of a hill, the permanent vans/cabins scattered about among caravan sites.  Only a limited number of sites were able to accommodate a longer caravan and no effort had been made to level the sites – we walked around the caravan leaning towards the front.  The shower wouldn’t drain, either.  There was a pile of bricks at each site to help raise the jockey wheel and jacks.  Not keen on having the jockey wheel sitting on half a dozen different sized bricks.  We suffered a very noisy afternoon and night; were quite glad to leave the next morning.

Left Moss Vale early on Sunday, with a 500km drive planned for Sunday.  The area around Mittagong/Bowral/Moss Vale was very green and looked very prosperous.  We continued south on the Hume Motorway – very easy driving with no trucks and light traffic.  We had our second stop of the day at the Dog on the Tuckerbox and managed to arrive a few minutes before Sally and Paul left.  We will see them again on Tuesday.  Our next stop was at Holbrook for fuel and lunch, before arriving at Wangaratta’s Painted Island Caravan Park.  This was a lovely quiet and peaceful park, most welcome after the previous night.

Monday morning was cool and it wasn’t long before the threatened rain commenced as we continued south along the Hume Motorway.  More trucks and vehicles today!  We left the motorway at Seymour, heading towards Yea and the Yarra Valley.  After last year’s experience, we couldn’t really drive past Yering Station and decided to have lunch as well as make a purchase from the cellar door.  We arrived at Big4 Mornington Holiday Park (South Frankston) about 2.30pm and looking forward to staying put for six nights.