A LONG TRIP AND A SMALL DAM
The Tank Hill Reservoir was hardly the main objective of this trip,
which was in fact to overshoot it for the city of Portland. As
mentioned in my last post, I had a two night stay there in order to
attend an uncle's funeral. It was actually a bit like being at
someone else's uncle's funeral because it turns out he was very
involved with his wife's family and her children from a previous
marriage, which is nice really since he was always a bit outcast
from my mother's family. I'm still awkward at family gatherings -
either in the form of sitting awkwardly on my own, or standing
awkwardly with people while conversations of general disinterest to
me pass by. A thought occurred to me last night that I'm not sure
whether I am different, or whether I _want_ to be different. Not in
the way of a mohawk hairdo and nose piercings, but just not feeling
the need to try and mould myself into a character who matches
others around him through thinly vailed fictions. Well actually I
watched The Assasination of Richard Nixon last night and was
feeling vaguely concerned about some traits shared by me and the
lead madman. Even the mobile showroom bus idea, jeeze...
Anyway, arranging to stay with my mother was indeed a mistake. She
picked a two-bedroom suite (more modest than it sounds) at an old
1850s guest house still operating as a B&B today, for which I did
end up paying a portion of the fee. When suggested over the phone I
agreed this was fine for me so long as I had a separate room, but
noted that my stepfather might have issues with it being upstairs
and perhaps not having a good chair for him to sit in. "No, that'll
be fine". Of course when we got there be immediately complained
about the stairs and the chairs, and I also felt crowded being next
to them and managing to hear them relentlessly chattering even
through the thick internal wall of the bluestone building (I was
tired out from the hot drive there and failing to get an early
night's sleep). The next day we went to check out another two-bed
room in a single-story building out the back (the old
kitchen/laundry, even more solidly built in thick bluestone than
the main place) which had a comfortable couch. The second bed was
effectively in the attic, accessed by a neat spiral staircase, but
with no wall between - just on a landing, and a shared bathroom.
"That's not a separate room!", "yes it is, it's upstairs", "but
there's no wall, no door, I'll hear you more than last night", "oh
well, it's better for [stepfather]". "But I warned you about all
this before you booked the first room!", "yes but that's all done
now". So while they accepted the change of room and went off to
explore the town I was back to my laptop for a hurried scan through
the still-vacant motel rooms I'd been looking into back before my
mother raised the idea of staying together. Finally it turned out
the B&B had a late cancellation and I ended up staying in their
best room at a reduced fee for one guest, which I must say was very
nice for the second night, and exceedingly quiet back upstairs in
the main building (but for a late-night thunderstorm which was
still somehow less sleep-disturbing than the intermittent mumbles
and clatters of my mother and stepfather). But oh the stress of it
all, and overall for no cost saving compared to the motels I was
originally considering. I'd say lesson learnt, but the horrors of
childhood caravan holidays should have already put me off this idea
if I'd had any sense at all.
Resuming this post at the other end of the week, having now finally
recovered my energy... The trip itself was good fun. I followed one
of my earliest planned routes as far as George Taylor's Stores at
Grassmere Junction, a large two-story hardware/surplus store (plus
motorcycle museum) inexplicably placed in the middle of open
farmland on an intersection with a minor highway north of
Warrnambool. You wouldn't know it from their website but this is
actually quite a treasure trove of old obscure engineering
equipment and army surplus, of the sort my old 1950s/60s
electronics magazines are crammed with ads for. This central hub of
the (rather diminished) George Taylor's Stores chain is the last
remaining example of such a store in Australia that I've found.
When I visited years ago there seemed to be more electronics stuff,
in an area now devoted to office furnature. But since last time I
spent so long hunting through that spot until closing time, their
rearrangement at least prompted me to get to their area out the
back where all the precarious stacks of army surplus crates reside
under layers of dust which have long ago defeated the adheasion of
most price stickers on the stock tumbling out from inside them.
Eventually I discovered some reels of switchboard wire for $3 each,
and, after checking excitedly that the price was really $3 per reel
not per meter, bundled up a lifetime's supply of insulated
breadboard/veroboard wire in all the different colours they had.
Also a plastic warning sign for lasers, because why not? A
projector bulb (I've got so many projectors it was worth the chance
It'll fit one), some really cheap bundles of narrow flexible
plastic tubing, and for $10 a possibly never-used 5.25" floppy
drive in an external case* designed for some long-forgotten "Zenith
Data Systems" computer system. Excellent fun, though I did spend so
long there that it defeated my aim of continuing to Portland before
the weather got hot.
As a result I skipped visiting the collapsed volcano of Tower Hill,
except to view it in passing from one look-out. Then the Jag's
gearbox overheated (seems to be in increasingly frequent problem
going over steep terrain in hot weather, I'll have to make another
attempt at extracting the extremely stuck bolt that's prevented me
ever changing the transmission fluid filter), so I stopped off at
Port Fairy to let it cool down in the sea breeze while I walked
around exploring an island with a lighthouse and finding some lunch.
It's nearing two weeks since the trip now and I still haven't
finished this, so I'll be brief about the signts of Portland: Nice
car museum, run by a car club housing cars owned by its members.
The WWII museum had great exhibits tracking the progress of the war
from beginning to end - spotted a few things I have at home,
including the anti-aircraft artillery shells but they had the
(naval) gun to go with them. The setting for it was well suited to
me - a disused water tower (a vertical dam/reservoir?) - although
at the same time not ideal in combination with my fear of heights
because you can see all the way down from the stairs. Great view
from the top though. A bit odd that none of the people stopping at
the clifftop look-out below go into the museum - it was empty the
whole time I was there (even the bloke running it was outside
pruning the adjacent garden when I went in and paid the $4 entry
fee in the honesty box). The actual port of Portland is, unusually
for a rural town, still very active and dealing in bulk products
like timber and (huge mounds of) woodchips. It's overlooked by a
late 19th century fort built to defend against the Russians with a
sequence of ever-bigger guns still there today. The last gun
emplacement is still intact and was restored in the 1980s, but has
since seen so little maintenance that it's back to looking like a
ruin again, and the museum area in the interior section of the
concrete ammunition store looks like it hasn't opened in years.
Besides exploring the history, it was a great spot for exercising
my biniculars again to spy on the port activities.
I returned from Portland via an alternate route, although diverted
back to the waterfall I missed on the way up, where I ended up
taking a nap before continuing to the nearby Tank Hill reservoir.
This pretty little reservoir is gated off from the public but the
road runs right next to it so you get a good view just from the
western gateway, including of the earth-construction dam.
Built in the 1930s, this is the only reservoir I'm aware of in that
part of Victoria below and west of the Grampians, although they do
tend to hide from me. It's built in the crater of an extinct
volcano, so doesn't recieve run-off from a large catchment area
above like most reservoirs. As the name Tank Hill suggests, it's
mainly a storage location forming one part of a system to supply
the relatively large city of Warrnambool 25Km away to the
south-west.
Its tree-lined banks make an attractive spot that seems well suited
to public access, but apparantly the water authority didn't want
the trouble as "keep out" signs are plentiful along the low fence
next to the small paved road. True, the close proximity to Hopkins
Falls which I visited just before would probably make it a surplus
of picnic spots in the area.
Return via Cobden was a fun drive through roads I haven't travelled
since my last trip that way years ago. But annoyingly, like last
time, it was getting too late and I was stressing to get back
before it got dark, which I at least achieved this time thanks to
the late sunset this time of year. After skirting around the
now-dry lake adjoining it, I then confirmed a second time that any
rumour of a pizza shop at the nearest town to home from that
direction was either out of date or misunderstood. The shops there
seem altogether dead except for the pub these days, night or day. A
few new houses built on the outskirts though - I guess land is
cheap there.
Back home and onto trying to finish this post for two weeks! In the
end I've remembered that this is supposed to be my month off and
just kept going past 9AM this morning. I just don't seem willing to
write in the evenings lately, or do much at all really. I'm
thinking of investigating the nutrition of my diet in case I'm
sabotaging my own energy levels that way. Not that babbling here is
a productive use of any surplus energy anyway.
I guess I'll be hunkering down away from the Christmas traffic for
the next week or two, so no more adventures for the rest of the
month.
- The Free Thinker
* Same as this (but possibly never used since the drive still has
its head-protector card inserted - probably more military surplus):
https://www.scuzzscink.com/amiga/scuzzblog_july19/scuzzblogdjuly19_2301.htm
