Skip to main content

Beyond to Belmont



As we were going to bed last night we received notification that the Hume Highway was closed between Coolac and Tumbarumba. We were cut off. The only traffic were fire engines and police, red and white lights flashing through the clouds of dust and smoke swept up by the gusty winds.

Needless to say, it was difficult to sleep. Our bags were packed in the car should we need to evacuate, but how would we know?

I check the emergency app. A couple of hours later the highway is open again and the fire warning reduced. I begin drifting off to sleep. But Kita stirs and decides he is thirsty. Click, click, click as he licks at his bowl. Then back around the room. Then click, click, click again.

Does he want to go out to do a pee now? I attach his leash and walk him out into the dark night air. It smells of rain. Kita sniffs and sniffs, but it is a long while before he releases. I drag him back.

Some sleep again. I'm dreaming, when Alex awakes for his trip to the bathroom. Now Kita is awake again. Slurp, click, slurp. Not again! I am on edge, not wanting him to mess the motel room.

I drift off, get disturbed, drift off again. It's a bit after 5.30 when B turns on the light for Alex and I am woken up again. Oh no, now I have to take Kita out again. I am so tired!

Kita takes his sweet time and I am losing patience. As I drag him inside again I forget to remove the key and somehow it gets stuck between in the screen door. We are locked in.

It's an hour before we can call the motel management to get us out. B is in a hurry to leave. I fight with Kita to put his harness on to enable us to buckle him into the car. He growls and snaps at me and I lose my temper. There is no way I should be driving down to Geelong today.

B takes the steering wheel. He fill up with petrol and give the windows a wipe down. The car is filthy with rain smeared dust. Breakfast is simply some flavoured milk.

The road is quiet and stays that way all the way to the border. Alex and Kita sleep in the back.

We pass through Albury and into Victoria, but soon Alex needs to use the facilities and it's about time that Kita did too. We stop at the Chiltern rest area, which has clean facilities and a covered parking area. There is also a walk up the hill into the National Park.


Kita frustratingly takes his time to do a pee.

Soon enough again we are getting hungry. First we stop at a McDonald's, but there are limited places to eat and look after a dog, so we drive off. I didn't feel like a burger anyway.

I suggest a bakery. A bit further down the road is Glenrowan, the location of Ned Kelly's final battle. We've been here before.

The pastie is pretty ordinary, but their sweet selection looks so good! I can't go past that Victorian speciality, the jelly slice. A thin layer of raspberry jelly over lemon cheesecake and a biscuit base.

From there we continue straight on to a destination of Belmont in Victoria's second largest city of Geelong, past the largest city, Melbourne. The motorways are wide and busy, but we make good time, arriving earlier than predicted.

The house we are renting is clean and well equipped. There's a big garden out the back for Kita, though the soil is cracked with the dry. We head over to the Waurn Ponds shopping centre to pick up ingredients for dinner and additional bedding linen for Alex. We thought he'd be in a single bed, not a queen to himself.



Exhausted, we just have a dinner in, watch Australia play in the ATP Cup tennis. I suspect that there's a Big Bash cricket match in Geelong tonight too, judging from the crowds outside the local stadium.

It's a relief to have escaped the fires and the smoke for now, though we must return and there's the lingering feeling that nowhere is really safe now.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Kamioka mines: from silver to supernovas

Part of the Kamioka zinc mining and smelter complex Just after posting about the Kamioka Railway another photo from that 2006 set piqued my interest. Up there in the mountains the landscape looked blasted not just by winter but by something more. It was the kind of lonely place where you would not expect to find major industry, so this sight was quite surprising. Even more surprising is the history associated with this photo. According to some sources mining and refining of ores in Kamioka dates back to 710 AD  and only closed in 2001. Undoubtedly the mine was a major reason for the existence of the Kamioka Railway. Refining of zinc still continues to this day under the parent Mitsui Kenzoku zaibatsu . Gold, silver, copper, zinc and lead were all dug out of the rock here. Unfortunately, the process released cadmium into the river, which, when taken up by the rice that was grown in the river, caused the terrible itai-itai disease  - meaning "It hurts! It hurts". Cadm...

Asagaya and heading home

How can I be happy? I am about to return to a country where the toilets have at most two buttons and no seat warmers. But the tickets are booked and there are no cyclones, typhoons or other disasters standing in our way. It's almost time to go back to my first home. First B wants to do some "local shopping". So we catch the Chuo Line up a few stations to Asagaya, a residential area with a number of Shotengai, covered and uncovered arcades leading away from the station and narrow alleys lined with bars. It is an interesting area for a wander around. We are mainly looking, do some shopping for toothbrushes and sweets from Seiyu, a Wal-Mart owned supermarket/minor department store. We skipped breakfast and lunch is ramen and gyoza at a small restaurant near the entrance to the Pearl Centre shotengai. With the help of a staff member, I manage to purchase tickets at a branch of Lawson to the Ghibli Museum for a friend travelling to Japan in May. There are some...

To Melbourne on the XPT sleeper

Excited by the prospect of reliving the experience of seeing my very first movie and hearing the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra perform it I bought tickets to The Empire Strikes Back in Concert in Melbourne back in February. Then I did nothing about actually getting there. Much as I love Melbourne, due to family commitments I didn't want to spend more than the Sunday away. Flights there and back made sense, but  my flight down to Melbourne in late October reiterated the fact that I usually don't enjoy descending into the city. And the concert was in December, a season of summer storms. I really didn't feel like driving the whole route alone and in a hurry, so that left one choice. The train. My very first trip up to Sydney from Melbourne was aboard the luxury Southern Aurora. Or it was supposed to be luxury. I wouldn't know because I spent the whole ride up very sick with the flu lying in the top bunk, unable to stay awake for my whole of night vigil. Now only...