Day 2 Sunday 15/6/2025 Benalla, Vic to Junee, NSW, wet 8 to 10 degrees

The rain started in the wee hours and it was nice to be toasty and snuggled under two doonas listening to the pattering on the roof.

By the time that we’re pulling out we can hear the arriving show roosters crowing in the poultry pavilion. I can tell you it’s an effort not to run over and say g’day to them. The Hume Highway is quiet, there’s spitting rain at times. The trees are still yellow and holding onto their leaves. We see thousands of solar panels, solar farms stretching for kilometres. Not far after Albury and the New South Wales border we leave the Hume Highway and pick up the Olympic Highway. Spotting an inviting bakery, we break for a warming coffee at Culcairn. It’s an old town with solid buildings, wide verandas and appears to have had much more importance in the past. This is the Riverina area that we’re in now so we’re talking grain and sheep, silos and a main railway

line. The old pub opposite the station is enormous, but only the bar trades now. The coffee from the Culcairn Bakery is good and the cafe is cosy compared to the gloom outside.

We pass through the towns of Henty, The Rock, and Uranquity before changing to the Sturt Highway and skirting the ever-growing town of Wagga Wagga.

It’s a short run up to the town of Junee. The golf course is two blocks up the hill from the centre of town and the caretaker is super helpful in setting us up on what was once the bowling green. At least we can’t complain about our site not being level. The rain clears around 3:00pm. Out of practice from these driving days and having visited Junee many times we put our feet up and I sketch the house across the road…because it’s there and it is interesting.

Dinner is a frozen paella from home and oh dear we’ve stuffed up the TV! Kindle time!

Accom: $24.00, Fuel: $60.86, Towing Kms: 281kms

Power, water, toilets