TUESDAY APRIL 28    HOME TO WANGARATTA     280kms

Finalized getting ready to go. For once, we managed it all in a calm and methodical way. The only drama was that, when it came time to get on Bus, Couey baulked, slipped her harness and was loose. But she didn’t run right away, just circling around us. Then she came to John when called and the inducement of chew bone coated with peanut butter got her on board, where she settled quickly.

The day was not too warm, lots of fluffy clouds, even some blue sky.

Left home at 11.15am. God, it was good to be heading off again.

Melba Highway – crest of the Great Dividing Range

Five years ago, this was blackened trunks and white ash, no green then.

Took our normal  route to Seymour, where we stopped as usual at the New Crossing Park for lunch. I’d made sandwiches before we left home. Couey got to have a ball chase, but only after she’d taken advantage of a momentary distraction on our part, and managed to lie down in a large, muddy puddle. Swamp dog!

The picnic table and seats had been removed, and the old toilets were closed up. I wondered if they were trying to deter people from stopping there?

Took the Hume Freeway northwards, stopping after only 9kms at the Grass Tree Rest Area – where there were toilets! Couey got a bonus walk around too. It was a well set out rest area, with car parking separated from truck and bus parking places.

Further along we stopped again at the Balcattah  Rest Area, for John to have a wake up walk. We all wandered about for a bit.

After this morning’s protest, Couey had no more reluctance to get on board Bus after stops.

Before this trip, John had bought a new Garmin GPS – a truck model with a larger screen. Because of the distance of the windscreen in Bus from the driver, he’d had trouble reading the screen on the old one. Set for truck use, it would plot routes that avoided nasties like low bridges – in theory, anyway. It seemed to take us on a slightly round about route to our caravan park in North Wangaratta. Perhaps that was because, being truck enabled, it avoided the centre of town. But it had not taken us via the Over Dimensional route at Seymour, so that didn’t make sense. There, the way we went, had we been a truck, we would have been seriously embarrassed at the very low railway bridge!

Arrived at Cedars North Wangaratta at 3.45pm. Long enough for the first day. The very nice man gave us an en-suite site where we could drive through and keep the Terios hitched to Bus. $45 after discount.

Staying hitched up at Cedars North

We were a bit slow at setting up, as we tried to remember how to do it. Both the awning and the TV aerial were stiff from disuse.

John fiddled about setting up his Blackvue dash camera, which he hadn’t done at home, for some reason.

A walking trail on part of the old highway bordered some of the park and we went walking along that, for a while. That was an unexpected benefit of the park. It was a pleasant walk with lots of interesting smells for Couey. There were some rabbits which she didn’t even see, and some cattle near a fence. These she gave a very wide berth to. Cattle dog? Who, me….nah! I even raised a sweat. walking, but then I was hopelessly unfit.

John couldn’t get the TV to acquire a signal – something was wrong, somewhere.

Tea was cold chicken marylands that I’d pre-cooked at home. I made a wombok coleslaw and a Greek salad to go with that. Dessert was passionfruit from our vines at home.

The night was rather chilly, but not quite enough to warrant getting out the heater.

My leg was hurting a bit; I would need to dress it tomorrow, probably. At least the cold was getting no worse.

In the absence of TV, we both spent some time using laptops and I wrote up the diary.

We are away! Done it – at last!