Up into the hills!

Covered 617 km today, first along the eastern end of the Great Ocean Road, cut into even more spectacular cliffs than we'd seen to the west, then past the famous surfing beaches south of Melbourne, then a long boring slog up the freeway past Melbourne itself to Wodonga (aboriginal for "bullrushes"), where we took the last 120 km along the Murray Valley Highway, another rollercoaster through the uppermost reaches of the Murray River system, almost 2500 km upstream from where we took the ferry across its outlet just over a week ago... Ending in the small town of Corryong (aboriginal for "bandicoot"), ready to drive over parts of the Great Dividing Range to Canberra, the federal capital, tomorrow.

Couldn't help thinking on the way how ironic it is that the towns we passed by alternate betwen copying their British namesakes, from Torquay to Glenrowan (where the Ned Kelly gang was finally mowed down) or are based on aboriginal names - from Geelong ("land, cliffs") to Wangaratta ("place where cormorants nest") to name just a couple. The aboriginal names are especially ironic as there are scarcely any aborigines left in this part of Ozz - largely wiped out by European diseases or massacres by the mid-1800s..... No wonder the bitterness of an art installation we photographed in Victor Harbor entitled "On occupied territory".....