Melbourne to Canberra

We managed to get everything into the campervan (with a few things in the car) on Sunday morning, and headed back to Canberra. This was our last trip!

Of all those trips I’d spent on the Hume Highway between Melbourne and Canberra over a period of almost a year, this one was now the last. I’d grown fond of the drive, listening to all those audio books, and I became familiar with a lot of the landmarks along the way. There are some wonderful landscapes on that trip, if you take the time to look around.

It’s good to see some road works going on in NSW, and hopefully there will soon be more freeway sections of the road coming into the Hume Highway. In fact, it doesn’t seem so long ago that going through Albury was a 60 kph slow zone through the Albury city streets. Now the new bypass speeds you through Albury. Wodonga has been bypassed for so long I can’t remember. Albury was such a nuisance with so many left and right turns as you twisted through the centre of town hitting traffic light after light. One disappointment for me with the Albury bypass was the discovery of a roadhouse on the northern end just outside Albury that sold great fish and chips. Of course, it was a truck stop, which is often a sign of good food on the highway. Well, the freeway has bypassed that service centre. But the smooth-as-glass road surface of the Albury bypass is brilliant.

Of course, the more freeway sections that are added the more small towns will be bypassed, which may affect the viability of some of them. Of all of the small towns, Holbrook is one that caught my eye despite my never having stopped there for long, except once for some chips late one night. Holbrook is submarine town. I don’t know how far Holbrook is from the sea, but to have a full size submarine in the town centre is no mean feat. And I don’t think the river system in Australia stretches as far as Holbrook. Alas, the old subs must have arrived in sections by truck, unless there is an artesian basin running under Holbrook. Perhaps, I’ll get back that way for a weekend drive sometime and check out the sub. What a bizarre thing for the city council to do.

Another fabulous section of the Hume Highway, as far as engineering achievements is concerned, is on the northern outskirts of Melbourne, just south of Craigieburn. I used to get badly lost before the freeway section was completed if I missed a road sign or detour sign on the way into Melbourne. It seemed such a hodgepodge of roads through an industrial area of town. Not only has this section of the road been made top class, but there are a number of wonderful roadside sculptures that are worth more than a glance, and they look stunning at night the way they have been lit up, and look here for more. Look out for the speed traps that are in this new section, and also in the final run up to Melbourne; there are no warning signs. You just get caught.