Winter Wanderings – Day 20 – Born To Travel Australia

Jerilderie to Dromana

We awoke to a cold clear day. A quick breakfast and pack up and we were driving through Jerilderie township just after 8:30. Passing the Royal Hotel we had to be quick to notice a grey signboard featuring bushranger Ned Kelly. Hope you can spot it too.

To our right was a small lake.

Out in the countryside the terrain was flat and lots of sheep could be seen.

Just before 9:30 we arrived at the border town of Tocumwal.

Passing over the Murray River and we were back in Victoria

winding our way on the road through the heavily treed, flat billabong flood-land of the Murray.

At Koonoomoo we passed the ‘big’ strawberry.

We drove on and by 11:00 we were in Shepparton. This building is their arts centre.

However our focus was on a quick stop at the SPC factory outlet where we purchased tins of peaches, pears and tomatoes to stock up our pantry at bargain prices.

After swapping driver we headed south on the Goulburn Valley Highway. Lots of other cars and trucks passed us as we drove along.

Driving through Seymour we were impressed with this street art welcoming visitors to their tidy town.

At this point we headed east to Yea so we could drive around the east side of Melbourne rather than driving though it towing our caravan. It’s lots less stressful we find. Yea has a very clean and well presented toil-art block, featuring local artists’ work, which we visited.

Opposite is the very well preserved Grand Central Hotel. However we noted the dark gloomy clouds and quickly got back into the car and continued our drive south.

It was sheep farming country here too.

The road was quite windy.

At the Kinglake turnoff the road starts to descend quite sharply

but the Eucalyptus forest is quite beautiful for the passenger to enjoy while the driver concentrates.

Closer to Yarra Glen we passed through the Yarra Valley winery area; bare vines in neat rows.

As we approached the Yarra Glen bypass we noticed strong evidence of the recent heavy rains with flooded paddocks on display.

Soon we came to the back of a line of queued cars. The road was partly covered so only one lane of traffic was passing through.

The controller soon let us through, flooded fields could be seen to our left here too.

We soon drove through the outer eastern suburbs of Lilydale, Croydon and Ringwood and onto the Eastlink Freeway southwards. Near the end of Eastlink we took the turnoff towards Portsea.

The traffic joining onto the Peninsula Link wasn’t too bad

and we made good time to arrive home just after 3:00pm. We quickly unpacked before driving down to Dromana beach for a welcome walk to stretch our legs. After so many days travelling inland it was great to be back home and see the sea again.