This covers the first day of our trip to Adelaide. Despite spending a few minutes - while eating breakfast, so really multi-tasking - watching the recording of the Giro going round Naples we dropped the garage door just before 0800 hrs and headed off. As usual our Satnav, Polly (named after Connie Booth's character in Fawlty Towers) began by trying to send us up Angophora (NOT going to happen in the Jetta) and then back through the town centre. She got the idea when we headed to Karbeethong.
At this point our anticipated time of arrival was 1640 hrs. I will add in a comment that in the past when I have looked at trip times in Google Maps etc the average speeds they have used off freeways were appallingly slow. So I am hopeful of getting there a tad quicker than this.
The weather was fairly average to begin with, but started to clear up by Genoa. The roadworks at Drummer were still evident but did look to have progressed since we last came through - about 10 days ago. NB: all photos were taken by the passenger.
I will comment about the small white car. It looked like a slug-mobile so I expected to overtake it PDQ. In fact in rumbled along pretty well and disappeared over the horizon somewhere after Orbost.
The next image shows one of the sections of lane dividers West of Bairnsdale (where Frances had taken the wheel when we stopped to refuel at the APCO station - 4c/l cheaper than United and 17c/l cheaper than Mallacoota).
Here is Polly in position.
The first election sign we saw was a few West of Cann River. It was for Darren Chester. We saw another one of his and two small ones for the ALP person (I think, it wasn't easy to read at 100 kph) before Bairnsdale. I took this one in Stratford. (The gravestone looking thing at the back is flogging hay!)
This appalling snap is to remind me to comment on the most frequent corflutes in Stratford: advertising the upcoming Shakespeare Festival. The river there is the Avon😲!
An illustration of the streetscape of Traralgon. Sort of like Nowra South with coal mines rather than a naval base!
On the subject of coal mines here is a view of the Yallourn pit.
I was fascinated to see that on the floor of the pit there were masses of sprayers operating. I presume these are to dampen the dust. Just in case anyone wonders why the water table in the surrounding area has disappeared!
After a couple of hours we swapped back and Frances assumed the
Berenice Abbott role. This was ur first glimpse of the CBD.
A much closer view.
AAMI Stadium.
Docklands
This bridge was an interesting bit of architecture, to the South of the road we were on.
We were by this stage approaching the Westgate Bridge. I think by now I could probably find my way through this mess without Polly yelling "Keep right" but it was very reassuring. This time was even better than last as I had turned off Bluetooth on my phone so the satnav kept working all the time.
The approach to the bridge. Traffic is a tad lighter at 2pm on a Sunday than 5pm on a weekday!
The idea of this photo is show how the bridge curves away to the North as you start to go up it.
Once over the bridge, after a few kms of badly designed freeway, we turned on to National Highway 8 towards Ballarat and Ararat. We were impressed by Polly's comment to "Stay on the National Highway for 184 km.". In the UK that would have you driving into the sea in most directions. By this stage we had extended the drive by 10 minutes - mainly the two driver changes, although a stretch of stupid 60 kph limit (for no obvious reason) also contributed.
Approaching Ararat I thought we could see sunbeams over the Grampians. Not for about 50 km! The nearer hills are probably Mount Buangor and the further one Mt Cole Creek.
A few shots of Ararat.
Catholic church and school.
The Town Hall. I have kept this image as an example of what happens if you don't resize the image before limiting it to 100kb.
This is what it should look like!
Finally we get a glimpse of the Grampians (with more sunbeams).
As we had been driving for 50+ kms on a C road we did pick up a few minutes but arrived at our accommodation at about 1647. So Polly's estimate of 1640 was on the money.
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