The crossing was smooth last night, just a few minor bumps and shakes but that was all, and arrival in Melbourne was uneventful. 

We met Moira from WIMA at a cafe in St Kilda beach for brekkie. Cool lady and great talking to her. Unfortunately, we were unable to take up her offer to stay at her place as we had a good few kms to stick on the clock today. That is one of the things with OZ - distances. There is no nipping anywhere because everything is just too far apart. People kept telling us to follow the coastal route from Melbourne as its such a great road. But we need to be up in Port Macquarie by December 20th, so the fastest route is the only viable option

But not before we’d headed out to the Doncaster Apple store to pick up a new Macbook Air for Gordon. By the time we actually got underway, it was nearly 1300hrs and unlikely that we would get right across Victoria and reach Albury afterall.

However, we did, and with a couple of stops too, one just a regular fuel stop with a bit of a bike tweak near where Ned Kelly  lived and another at Glenrowan where he made his last stand. 

I’m not quite sure why he is such a folk hero given that even the info boards in Glenrowan flag him as a thief and a murderer but not much else; no other content about his life other than his father died early leaving a large family, and young Ned took on the role of ‘man of the house’ when he was just thirteen. But that wasn’t uncommon back then anyway, and the same info boards say his father was a heavy drinker and a bit of a git himself too. He doesn’t seem to have had any Robin Hood tendencies and the ordinary townsfolk seemed to have lived in fear of him and his mates. So who knows; a bit more of that convenient romanticism that now shrouds the convict era perhaps.

The weather changed on the way up the freeway too, going from cool but pleasant down in Port Melbourne to very warm once we’d crossed the Dividing Range. Lovely, and a good 10 degrees warmer than Tasmania. And the grass got progressively more ginger too, a big change from the lush meadows and verdant roadside vegetation of tasmania. Its funny how your brain gets used to surroundings and then catches you out when things suddenly change. Its a bit like that feeling when you’re in the cinema watching something set in the desert or something, and you come out into normal urban surroundings with buses rather than camels and ‘normal’ weather.