Somehow, it's only the second day of my holiday. I guess I've been
packing a lot in. Three towns, five train/bus services, one and a
half rolls of film. It seems like ages since I wrote my last post,
yesterday. Ages ao and a world away, but then again neither is
remotely true. I'm still in rural Victoria typing out my nonsense
on an obsolete computer for an audience of who knows, and it's only
Friday.
It wasn't a promising start. The first train was fifty minutes
late, a new record for that daily service into Melbourne,
surpassing the half-hour of last time, and plenty of time to wonder
whether the frequently broken description of the disruptions caused
by that rail "breakage" on the V/Line websute had simply omitted
the cancellation of the service that I was trying to catch (in fact
it seems unlikely that it had anything to do with it). But it
arrived, and luckily I was connecting with the Bendigo service
which isn't reserved and runs hourly. None of the others were like
that though, so I'm very glad that it has turned out to be the only
one seriously late, with only two left to go.
The reserviour I wanted to visit in Bendigo on the way to Kerang
didn't pan out. The bush tracks didn't go where I thought they
went, or I just took wrong ones. I ended up just following a fence
around the perimeter of some still active gold mine workings (small
scale by the looks of it, maybe just looking through old spoil
heaps for stuff missed in centuries past), fighting my way through
the bushes, and I eventually got onto a road that the map shows
going to the reservoir. But the further I walked down it, the room
beside the road kept getting narrower and the traffic heavier, so
eventually when I saw a properly-signposted walking track into
Bendigo (I was walking rom Kangaroo Flat - ~6Km as the crow flies,
but I very much don't fly like a crow) I decided that skipping the
dam was much safer.
The walking track was nice, feelng isolated even with the sound of
the city in the background (outer suburbs of Bendigo sort of
surround the park area in the south), and plenty of old mine
workings to spot. I even found a small lake which was a water
catchment at least. It did dump me out at an unidentified road
though - one of those major ones where it's so obvious to everyone
which road it is that they don't bother to signpost it at any of
the intersections. Unable to match anything to my maps I eventually
went down a suburban street and followed signs of civilisation such
as paved footpaths backed up by compass bearings. The led me onto
another anonymous main road along which the houses got
progressively older, a good sign I was heading towards the centre
where the station is. Eventually I found out I was on the road I
intended to follow after visiting the reservoir - from the address
of a house printed on a For Sale sign. I'll admit it, GPS does have
its uses, but at least this keeps me sharp and even with an hour
lost to the typical fault of V/Line I still had four hours to kill
there somehow.
I will admit that those last couple of blocks to the station felt
really rather long, albeit adorned with some impressively fancy old
houses. I did have to cary my large-ish old shoulder-strapped
travel bag with me the whole way, and until my body woke up from
spending most of the say sitting on or waiting for trains, I wasn't
sure that I was going to make it further than one Km. but I got
there, and after making sure of the platform where my the next
train was to depart (lesson learnt from Footscray station in
melbourne - the presence of prominent timetables for your train on
a platform does not mean that it ever departs from that platform!),
I still had two hours to get a meal for tea.
It took me some more walking about to settle on pizza, I was going
for fish and chips but somehow couldn't find a place. Got on the
train half dead. I had window seats reserved but the person next to
me had always borded first and slid over, then of course it seems
silly to make a fuss over it, but it irks me that they then spend
the whole journey looking at their phone anyway. Very few others
seems to a afflicted with my problem of getting motion sickness
from looking at a screen or book while in a vehicle. Of course the
reason I got a seat by the window that time was it was 8PM and all
to be seen through it was blackness after leaving Bendigo.
I alighted at Kerang, a place of such quiet at 10PM that it sounded
almost like back at home. On the way to the motel I really enjoyed
wandering through past the shops in town all completely quiet and
with no cars or people to be seen. It'm amazing how much noise ATMs
make just doing nothing when there's no other sound to drown them
out. Unfortunately the motel wasn't where I thought it was going to
be, and after quite a bit of randomly wandering past deserted
storefronts I had to give in and fire up this eeePC 701SD (just
bout able to run Firefox usably since I maxed its RAM out at 2GB,
and light enough to carry easily) to check the address in Open
Streep Map, then in Google Maps because it turned out that Open
Street Map couldn't fine it either. It turns out I'd marked it a
coulple of blocks away on the same road for some reason.
So I got there pretty late, and with some fairly sore feet. Before
bed I did manage to set Wget grabbing a long list of stuff onto a
memory stick using the motel WiFi. Unfortunately it turned out to
mysteriously lose connection shortly afterwards and didn't get
going again propely until after 7AM - a slow fade out though, so
I'm not sure it could be explained by them turning off the WiFi at
night to foil the plans of patrons like myself. I did get 5GB worth
of stuff downloaded still, which is an entire monthly quota's worth
for me.
Just before the required check-out time of 10AM, and braving a
blister on my foot, I set out today to explore Kerang in the
morning. I walked down beside the river running to the West of the
township, besides the museum, which unfortunately only opens
Sundays but had a few intteesting bits of machinery displayed
outside. The observation tower contructed on top of a brick water
tower built in 1883 looked like it might no longer be open,
especially as it was adorned with an asbestos warning sign, but
following the advice of a website I asked in the adjacent library
and they were happy to unlock the door and let me in. A great view,
and an excellent look at the original engineering of the structure
and tank on the way up as well.
There's not a great deal else to do in Kerang. I read a newspaper
in the library before following a history guide map from its
information centre section back to the station. Stopping for my
standard lunch of six year old fruit snack bars and canned apricots
from expired fire fighting ration packs (also serving me for
breakfasts, but making up more weight in that damn bag which I had
to carry all about Kerang too because I'd checked out of the
motel). Then onto lake Boga by bus (the trains still go through
there, but only the buses choose to stop, which is quite annoying)
to see the flying boat museum. I actually saw the sight of the
hanger from the WWII flying boat base at Kerang, where it was moved
for use as a goods shed and demolished in 2003 due to termite
infestation. Last time I saw the flying boat on display at Lake
Boga was as a child and it was just propped. Now it's in a huge
shed along with many other displays. But it's also a long way from
the bus stop, which I didn't realise isn't at the site of the old
station (even though there's a bus shelter there), but right down
at the other end of town to the museum. It was a tight schedule
already to get back for the return bus to Pyramid Hill, which only
runs on Friday. Long story short I managed to see the museum fairly
comprehensively, and ended up hitching a lift to the bus stop with
a couple who'd come down from Queensland with a caravan, though it
was rather tight.
The bus got to Pyramid Hill at 5:30PM, on time, so I got to the
hotel, another product of the 1880s with some nice original
features up here on the second floor where I'm typing this for you
from my room. Nicest of all is that one of the two shared bathrooms
actually has a bath - the feature I failed to book in time at the
motel! I guess I won't be able to tie it up for too long, but it's
a great surprise and I'll give it a go tomorrow. The rooms have
actually been done up fairly recently, although the renovation has
obviously run out of steam at the upstairs hallway and bathrooms.
The halway has exposed paint-splattered floorboards which people
make an incredible amount of noise walking down. But noise wise the
main thing I missed is that the hotel is a music venue, so I'm
waiting to see when they're going to stop playing and I have a
chance at getting to sleep (based on the cheer and packing-up
clunks, I think it might have just happened at about 11:30PM...
nope). It is at another end of the building so at least it's not
that bad. The music is pretty good too so I'm not really
complaining. I saw them playing for a bit when I went down for
dinner earlier, placing an order in the same small room as a live
band isn't easy.
I'm easing my way out of my own frantic holiday pace with a two
night stay here, where tomorrow I've got a whole day to explore one
small country town (albeit with a surprisingly active solitary
pub), and its namesake hill. Then Sunday I leave at 8AM to spend
the best part of the day just sitting through the train ride back
home again (or as near as public transport will get me to it, which
is actually much further away than even I'd think of walking). It's
a fun view of the street out the window too, perfect for people
watching. It's a shame there's no heating, the leads for the
electric blanket don't even reach either of the power points, and
the window closes with a gap. but I found some extra blankets in
the nice antique wardrobe in the corner, so I think I'm fine.
Now the band's finished. It sounds like they're staying up here
too, they're singing their way up here as I type. Goodnight.
