Day 2 Monday 18/11/2024 Fryerstown to Newstead, cloudy 7 – 17

Woody has ants in his pants and can’t wait to hit the road again, even if we only have 18kms to do today.

Like yesterday, we miss a couple of turns, do a U turn, not preferable with the van on the back, and wander through some pretty gold mining towns. There are old weatherboard cottages with overgrown gardens, weird and wonderful weekenders and a couple of tiny houses. Small as it is, the town of Newstead is busy with delivery trucks and the lads at the Men’s Shed are out on the footpath selling their handiwork.

The old racecourse is across the Loddon River. The river seems to divide this town into two hamlets. The low side has the pub, supermarket, post office and café. The high side seems to have just as many houses and a delightful park, but its facilities are all redundant… the railway station, butter factory, pub, church and of course the racecourse which is now used as an RV stopover. The grass is nicely maintained, and we have sweeping views of sheep paddocks. The clean corrugated iron amenities give the place a ‘bushy’ feeling and we only have a handful of neighbours, if we don’t count the grazing corellas.

It’s too nice a day not to go walking and we each set off at our own pace to explore the town. I had spotted a couple of old buildings on the way into town so I’m hell bent on walking back to check them out. There’s a rough track along the river and before I know it I’m ten years old again and wandering along bush tracks and talking to the birds.

Either the local council is thoughtful, or the population is aging, but there are plenty of well-placed benches and I plonk myself down directly in front of the rather cute old wooden post office. It must be the busiest shop in town, but then it does double as a pharmacy.

We spend the afternoon watching over the sheep and cows, and swatting flies. VeeWee and the poodles surprise us by arriving a day early. Dinner is a BBQ and we eat outside with Mrs. Doubtfire’s old sarong acting as a tablecloth once more. The changing light across the summery yellow paddocks is mesmerising.

Accom: $10.00, (Toilets, showers, water available at nearby tap, dump point), 23 Towing Kms (dithering gave us another 5K’s)