Ever onwards!

After 2 days of successful and very pleasant meetings with colleagues in Melbourne, normally only in contact by email, I headed off westwards this sunny Saturday morning onwards to Adelaide, aiming to meet Ros there on Tuesday. A 730 km stretch, of which I drove 460 today, before stopping for the night in Bordertown, which amazingly enough is just over the border between the states of Victoria and South Australia (a seemingly arbitrary line at 141 degrees East of Greenwich).

Long stretches of flat to rolling prairie, some pastoral, some gigantic harvested wheat fields, all golden to brown, dry, in contrast to the green fields and meadows east of Melbourne - here in Bordertown the site owner confirmed that the big weather shift does occur around Melbourne and there hasn't been measurable rain here for 3 months now (but, wait for it, since I've arrived there may be some tonight!).

On the way drove through Ballarat, centre for the 1850s Gold Rush in the region, then Ararat, didn't see no Noah, but the best tourist attraction sign so far - "Gaol for the Criminally Insane, open daily"!!!! Then past the Grampians (imported photo), not quite the massive lumps of their Scottish name-givers, but decent enough hills to break up the monotony of the drive...

And now like the flock of ghalas (cockatoos) that squawkingly came to rest in the eucalyptus just over my van at sundown, I must tuck my head under my wings and say "Gnight mates!"