Michael, Antoon, Freddy and I all had tickets (thanks Michael) for the annual Essendon v Collingwood ANZAC day match at the MCG. There were abut 94,000 in the ground but to Michael’s disgust it was Collingwood who won the match with a surge in the last 2 quarters. We managed a new record though of drinking 8 pints during the match - which set us up badly for the rest of the evening, in which we went to the CBD to watch a friend of Michael’s performing in the Melbourne comedy festival. It was a messy night all round.

Everyone was in agreement when Michael suggested making a dash for Melbourne straight away, rather than caming near Albury which was our initial plan. The thought of another night of cold wasn’t very appealing after the warmth and comfort of a hostal the last 4 nights. We therefore spent the morning driving around the ghost town that is Canberra, taking in the sights which are pretty much exclusively government buildings.

There was hardly any traffic on the roads. Compare that with any other capital city in the world. I think our opinion of Canberra, albeit taken during the hours of darkness, was pretty accurate. There really isn’t much to do or see there. No wonder John Howard refused to live there when he was elected in the mid nineties. He caused uproar at the time, but it really is no wonder that he preferred to carry on living in Sydney.

We left Canberra around midday, and drove pretty much non stop to Melbourne. We arrived around 8 or 9 in the evening, and I have to admit it was nice to be back.

At 3pm today we’d decided to make the short drive to Canberra, leaving at about 3pm. After checking out of the hostal Antoon, Freddy and I went over to Manly for a last chance to his the beach. Once again the weather was glorious, but tat was soon to chance in Canberra. Being inland, and late autumn, Canberra was already close to freezing point during the night, about 20 degrees cooler than Sydney.

Canberra seemed like a ghost town. We arrived just after dusk and checked into the plushest, most well equiped hostal I’ve ever stayed in. It was the YHA, but our 4 bed dorm was spacious, clean and even had a TV in the corner. After eating at a Thai restaurant,we spent the evening in a bar with live music, called King O’Malleys. King O’Malley was a teetotal beaurocrat who kept Canberra dry until 1928, so name of the bar takes the piss out of this guy. We thought he looked not unlike Antoon, especially when he wore the glasses. Things have changed for Canberra. It is now regarded as having the most liberal drinking laws in Australia (read 24 hour opening) probably due to the fact that there’s not a lot else to do there.

Whist the others slept, Freddy and I bought a day tripper ticket valid for all Sydney transport, including the ferries. We spent the afternoon swimming in the ocean at Manly and whiled away the afternoon in the shade of an umbrella outside a bar near the beach. It was great weather, and as I knew it would probably be the last summer weather I’d see in Australia for a long time I was determined to make the most of it. We had dinner at a German bar - especially for Freddy, and had 3 mass each before meeting up with the others at a bar near Circular Quay, where Michael had arranged to meet up wth some friends of his who had moved from Melbourne to Sydney. Only after this did all of us go out!

I’ve been to Sydney half a dozen times, but this was my first trip by road. We continued along the Western Highway and stopped for lunch in Bathhurst. Bathurst is famous for it’s motor racing track, which we duly navigated before lunch. There is a speed limit of 60km/h which I assume is removed before the race in October each year…

Bathhurst is Australia’s oldest inland settlement, and has gas lamps on broad streets lined with victorian era buildings. It was fairly chilly, at around 15 degrees. It seemed hard to believe the forecast we read in the paper, that 90 minutes further on in Sydney the temperature was in the 30s. We continued on, stopping at the Blue Mountains near Katoomba, and eventually arrived in Glebe Village at dusk.

We had dinner at The Rocks in a Japanese restaurant and then hit the town. Nobody’s really sure what happened after that, except that Antoon and Michael were coming back to our hostal just as Freddy and I were heading to the beach the next day. Where did they get to?

We’d intended to make an early start today, but all to no avail. We finally set off far to late to make Sydney in one day. In fact, even if we’d set off at dawn we’d have struggled to make Sydney in a day. Instead we left around 1pm, initially heading north to Moama ad into NSW and carrying on until a town called Hay. I’d only every heard of Ha by reading Bill Bryson’s in “Down Under”, when he told someone in the gas sation that he hoped to make Hay whilst the sun shines. The gas station employee’s response was, after giving Bryson a blank look, “Ah, you won’t have any trouble with that. It’ll be light for hours yet”.

Hay came and went pretty quickly. It’s a tiny place.At Hay we turned right onto the Western Highway which would take us to Sydney via Bathhurst. Light was fading quickly, and the risk of writing off the car by colliding with a kangaroo became such that we stopped in a small NSW country town called West Wyalong. Not sure West Wyalong had had siuch a motley crew of Europeans visiting for a long time. We checked into a motel, and after that longed for shower hit the local pub. There were 2 of them in West Wyalong, so we chose the nearest one. We were the only ones there pretty much. The landlady seemed to be keeping it open only for us, but as is usual in the country in Australia, the bar closed at 10pm. Luckily we were around the corner from the RSL club, which because it’s a club is allowed to stay open longer - til midnight no less.

RSL (Returned Services League) clubs are in every town in Australia pretty much, similar perhaps to working mens clubs in the UK, and their licenses are slightly different than those of pubs regarding pokies (poker machinesor fruit machines) and alcohol. Normally you need to be a member to get in, but how strict this rule is seems to depend from club to club, and how busy it is.

Today was the day Michael suggested we should try to make a bushman’s roast. He’d not tried it himself before, but had seen others making one. We had 2 joints of lamb and beef, and with coals from the fire we burried them a foot under the clay and mud. It seemed similar to a Moari hangi in New Zealand. It was prepared just after lunch, and we left it in the ground or around 6 hours to allow it to cook. It turned out really well. We ate pretty well today, because we’d also bought some pieces of chicked for the barbie just in case the bushman’s roast didn’t turn out well.

This was our last night in Echuca, so we were duty bound to finish off all the food and beer left in the eskys before turning in. Can’t wait to get a shower somewhere tomorrow!

Our visitors left early, citing the fact that they didn’t come prepared for the extremely cold nights as an excuse to split. Indeed, is was pretty cold during the night if you didn’t have a decent sleeping bag. We headed into Echuca to watch some VFL footy. Ever easter Echuca plays it’s twin town across the state border, Moama. This year Echuca put over 100 points on their neighbours. Was very one sided, but it was my first experience of live Aussie rules football, so I was fascinated.

We got back to camp only to discover a ranger had been and put out our smoldering fire with water. We got a warning for leaving it unattended.

Today I was woken up by visitors. Matt, Michael’s ex colleague, and some pommie mates of his arrived at around 10am - far too early. Antoon still drunk from the previous night helped them all put up their tents whilst sipping Coffee with Whiskey - or was that Whiskey with coffee?? In any case, Antoon ended up sleeping it off the whole afternoon… Being Good Friday, all te supermarkets were closed. Fortunately there was a bottle shop open where we could get another couple of slabs and some more ice. The afternoon was then spent on the banks of the Murray, watching the paddle steamers pass us by and slowly getting drunk on VB.

The Murray river forms most of the Vic/NSW border, and is the most important inland waterway in Australia. It’s the 3rd longest navigable river in the world, and is approximately 2700km long. There used to be a punt crossing here at Echuca, hence the reason this town came into existence.

We set off from Melbourne at lunchtime, but this being the Thursday before easter the traffic was heavy and we made Echuca at only around 5pm. We managed o cram yet more into an already full car when we made a supermarket and bottle shop run in Echuca prior to finding a good spot by the river to set up camp. This was to be home for the next 4 nights.

Michael loves his camping, and has all the equipment you could imagine - including the biggest tent I’ve ever seen. It was bigger than our flat in Melbourne! For the next few days it became pretty much the job for Freddy and I to gather the wood for the fire.  That left 2 pyromaniacs to get the fire going and keep it that way.

Along the Murray river, which divides the states of Victoria from New South Wales, are several towns. Most of the towns have a twin town on the other side of the river. Echuca for example is in Victoria, and if you cross the river at Echuca you are in Moama, a town in New South Wales. A decade or so ago, Moama was thriving. I’m told that this was due to the prohibition in Victoria of gambling, so residents of Vic would head over the river to gamble in Moama. Of course, the Victorian government eventually woke up to the large amount of potential tax revenue they were missing out on, and legalised gambling in Victoria. Moama seems to me to be something of a ghost town nowadays. Following the Murray river, most of the larger towns are in Victoria with one major exception being Albury in New South Wales. We will pass through Albury and it’s twin town on the Victoria side of the river, Wodonga, next week, as it’s on the Hume Highway which runs between Sydney to Melbourne.