Day 1 Sunday 19/3/2023 Home to Longwood, cloudy 25

We leave a little later than normal as it seems that I’ve caught the cold that Woody is in the last stages of. I doubt that we’ve had a decent night’s sleep in a week thanks to his coughing and leg cramps. But we should feel much better when we get to the drier climate north of The Divide (The Great Dividing Range north of which the climate is always warmer and drier).

There’s a Fun Run through the city today, so we begrudgingly take Eastlink and on through Heidelberg and Watsonia. A route that is strangled with busy, narrow roads and roadworks for future link roads that have been delayed a decade thanks to political yah yahing. By narrow roads I mean that the left-hand lane is a minefield of roadside signs that through the ravages of heavy traffic lean too close to the road for comfort.

It’s a relief to finally get on the Hume Highway and head away from the city. We grab a box of chicken nuggets and wonder what flavour the ‘spicy’ sauce is meant to be. At the sign marking the top of the Great Dividing Range the traffic grinds to a halt. They’re doing re-surfacing works and it gives us time to eat our indeterminate spicy nuggets.

Our old mate El Prado used to rave about the freedom camp at Longwood, so we pull off the highway just north of Seymour. The town of Longwood is 2kms to the west and the large recreation reserve is impossible to miss. There are facilities for many sports even greyhounds and oodles of space set aside for overnight campers. Best of all there are flushing toilets. Every RVers dream. And we’re not on our own as 4 other vans of our group are already here and two of our mates are also coughing and snuffling. Woody happily declares “Don’t worry I’ve done a RATs test and I haven’t got aids!”.

Woody notices that one of our gas bottle hoses has a leak. That’ll need replacing but switching across to the other bottle alleviates the problem.

The town is a block away and consists of the White Hart Hotel which is currently jumping as Dallas Alice is belting it out in the beer garden. There’s a general store that is closed this arvo, a primary school, and 2 wooden churches. What has been a brick and stone store has been sensitively renovated as a beautiful house surrounded by a brick-walled garden.

There’s a cooling breeze making happy hour under the gums quite pleasant. Dinner is leftover pizza from last night. Which, I might add is much better than it sounds.

Accom: $5.00

Fuel: $53.83

Towing Kms: 199Kms