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A leisurely trip back down the Hume highway today, with a few more stops than normal. It seemed to be a national day of roadworks too, with long delays in Albury and between Euroa and Seymour for road rebuilding.

An hour-long break at Holbrook, our favourite submarine town, where the stern of HMAS Otway has appeared in the park and seems to be part of a new exhibit to accompany the rest of the boat.

I wonder where the rest of the Oberon-class submarines are? Will have to find out what they all were, and where they've all ended up — there's at least one in Fremantle, one in Hastings, one in Holbrook...

Another hour for lunch in Albury, a magnificent hamburger from one of my favourite cafés, the Mermaid — stuck in the traffic in North Albury I was almost tempted to get out of the car and walk on ahead to order the food!

From 20°C in Yass and sunny at 9:30, the temperature gradually climbed to just under 30 at the NSW-Victoria border, then up to 36°C by the time we reached Melbourne. A big change from the last time we drove home this way! We finally got home around 6pm to discover that the tomato plants had all gone kind of crisp around the edges, but are still covered in green tomatoes.

Update

Here they are then, the Orion-class submarines HMAS OXLEY, OTWAY, OVENS, ONSLOW, ORION and OTAMA. HMAS Oxley was scrapped, but the bow remains at the maritime museum in Fremantle (Western Australia), HMAS Otway is in Holbrook (NSW) in the park, HMAS Ovens is in Fremantle in the maritime museum, HMAS Onslow is in Sydney (NSW) at the national maritime museum. HMAS Orion is tied up alongside the naval base HMAS Stirling, in Western Australia. Finally, HMAS Otama sits off Hastings (Victoria), waiting to be made part of a proposed Naval Memorial park. So I've seen three of the six in person!

  Today: 38.4km
  Trip: 598km
  Max: 63km/hr
  Time: 1:50:27
  Avg: 20.9km/hr

  Today: 84.1km
  Trip: 559km

  Today: 113km
  Trip: 475km

  Today: 82km
  Trip: 362km

  Today: 0km
  Trip: 280km

  Today: 75.5km
  Trip: 280km

  Today: 85km
  Trip: 205km

  Today: 74.6km
  Trip: 120km

There was a thunderstorm early last night and some heavy rain, but it all stopped later on. One obnoxious local appeared at the show ground sometime after the pub had closed and seemed to spend half the night walking around the campsite and screaming abuse. On and on he went to the tune of “You can ride a f'ing pushbike but you can't ride a f'ing horse....” The main topic at breakfast being where the drunk local had been standing, nearly everyone in the camp thought he was directly outside their tent.

Drizzly rain started around four a.m., then continued in a stop-start fashion throughout the day, settling in quite steadily at around two in the afternoon — just after Jo and I arrive in Dalgety and settled ourselves on the pub balcony, almost the only shelter in town.

There's not a lot to the town of Dalgety, one pub, one café, a famous brdige and the showground. It was apparently one of the preferred sites for the Australian national capital, but lost out due to its remoteness — so for those people who think that Canberra is cold, just imagine what it could have been like!

  Today: 44.75km
  Trip: 45km

A 7:30am arrival in Jindabyne, out of the bus and into endless queues to register, weigh bags, meet friends, find coffee then get back on the bus to head up to Charlotte Pass.

I'm not sure where Bicycle NSW got the coaches and drivers from, in the light of day the rust holes added nothing to last night's impressions of lurching driving and grinding gearbox. At least ours didn't sound as bad as the description we got from one bus full from Sydney — then they pointed out that we now had that driver and coach to head up the mountain! He was everything they warned us about, I think I'd rather have ridden the 40km uphill myself.

  Today: ??km
  Trip: ??km

?huh?

Late in the afternoon I had a spur-of-the-moment idea and hopped on the train into the city. After a few weeks of knowing that a cousin is somewhere in Melbourne, but probably busy being an English backpacker and doing whatever English backpackers do, I decide to go and find him rather than wait for him to find me. Almost didn't get there, the ticket machine on the platform decided to reject my $5 note a few times before finally spitting out a ticket, I grabbed it and dived onboard as the doors were closing, forgetting — of course — to validate the ticket.

Change at Flinders Street station, then around to Spencer street, an unholy nightmare of a construction site — the whole place is boarded up and barricaded off, misleading scraps of paper thumb-tacked to hoardings redirect passengers around in all directions. My ticket won't let me out the gates because I haven't validated it getting in, so I have to get it validated on the spot, a minor hassle.

Off down the street to the backpackers' on the corner to see if I can find Ben. First attempt is unsuccessful, I try the wrong surname — that side of my family tree is convoluted at best, and I have trouble remembering who has what name. I retire to the bar next door and order a beer — cheap, cool and flat — just how the English travellers like it. Inspiration strikes and I had back to the reception and try again with the right surname... success! A big catch up in the bar over a few drinks, Ben and I haven't seen each other since he was about ten, so many things have changed! Finally we decide to head over to Richmond and meet Jo for dinner. Ben goes to get changed, I ring Jo, we finish our drinks and off down the road to jump on a tram....

Of course I didnt bother validating my ticket, nobody does, I knew it was still valid from the train ride in.... As we were getting off at Richmond Town Hall, we were suddenly surrounded by four inspektors, insisting on seeing our tickets — of course mine had expired as a result beer, laziness and carelessness. The inspektors make us stay on the tram and miss our stop, but let us off a block later. Names and details are exchanged, we are seperated and quizzed individually, finally allowed to leave and told that in the next two weeks we may or may not receive a $150 fine each.

Finally we get to to catch up with Jo, who is starting to wonder where we'd got to. Dinner was fun, but it was an expensive evening!

Perusing the local freeby newspaper at lunch time, out jumps the following little article that may explain the absence of dodgy DVDs from the market this week as compared with last weekend. I wonder how long it'll be before the next one appears?

Pirated DVDs

Oakleigh detectives seized a large quantity of pirated DVDs at the Oakleigh Sunday Markey in Hanover Street on Sunday, February 6.

A 37-year-old Dandenong man will appear later in Dandenong Magistrates Court.

Lunch was a lamb souvlaki in one of the Oakleigh cafés that I hadn't managed to get to previously. Award winning, I think it said in some of the papers. The food was good, but certainly not earth shattering, I think my memories of the souvlakis in Toorak road are better — maybe it was just eating them at two in the morning that makes them taste better.

The weather keeps up its strange business of making Melbourne in summer time unpredictable. After yesterday's heat, it was drizzly and grey again, there were probably things I should have done at home, but it was easier to escape into a book — first a novell, then my last paper notebook as I finished writing about the trip to Vietnam.

With my on-call roster finished, the holiday really has started. I meandered down along the Station Trail to Clayton to see where it went, to see what it's like. Amazing how different to my preconceptions of Clayton, once past the factories of Oakleigh and Huntingdale, the path travels along a quiet park beside the line, only re-entering noise and bustle as it gets to Clayton road. A quick poke around the shops then it was up to the Uni. to drop off the phone — Clayton road is abysmal to cycle up, masses of traffic, and a huge number of drivers don't seem to be all that well acquainted with the Victorian road rules — sharing the road with them seems to indicate that it is too easy to get a license if you already hold an overseas one.

From Clayton back to Chadstone — a visit I've been dreading, I hate the place — changing a duplicate Christmas present book. Acres and acres of carparks, mums and cars and stress and screaming children. Me seemingly the only male over the age of five in the entire shopping centre! Leaving, back on the bike, a whim takes me, I swerve to the right and head west to Prahran. I spend the rest of the sunny afternoon with a pint or two reading The Island of the Day Before, sitting in the beer garden at Bridie O'Reilly's and watching the world go by. I'm definitely on holiday now.

A quick morning trip across the road to the markets. Curiosity had got the better of me, after last week I was wondering how many dodgy DVDs there'd be. Strangely enough, not one at any of the stalls! I did find myself a cheap pair of shoes for work — cheaper to buy them than to get my other ones repaired!

We missed the big noon start to the Chinese New Year festivities, but made it in by train for a couple of hours of lion dances, crowds and thunderous firecrackers. There seemed to be at least half a dozen of the lions, swirling and stomping and moving, never stopping, in and out of all the restaurants around Little Bourke street, chomping lettuce and spraying the crowds. So many short people in the crowds seemed to rely on cameras held above their heads, take a few photos in the right direction, pull the camera or phone down and see what they'd just photographed!

That's two weeks in a row I've had lunch at Cinque Lira. Two weeks in a row I've tried to have minestrone for lunch. Two weeks in a row that it isn't available! Gnocci and wine instead. I'm starting to obsess about a good bowl of soup!

Another day, another near miss.... A couple of times a week I meet them, dickheads in two much of a hurry who decide to drive the wrong way up the ring-road at Monash then cut through to the other side. The layout of the carpark seems to encourage them, the entrance is only a little bit past the through road — but far enough that they have to plant the foot and come roaring the wrong way head-on at any cyclist foolish enough to believe that the one-way road will have traffic only heading in one way. The driver of this one either didn't see me or didn't care, I slide to a stop in the gravel as he headed straight at me then tore left around the corner, spraying me with more gravel.

There's an interesting market held every Sunday in a carpark at the Oakleigh shops; this morning Jo and I wandered over after breakfast for a poke about. Second-hand books, masses of old electrical junk, pot plants and clothes... and a couple of dodgy young Asian guys selling pirate DVDs. I joked about the $20,000 fine for selling them with another guy near me, he laughed and pushed past to get his hands on the latest releases... Five minutes later at the other end of he markets there were two police officers interviewing another DVD seller, and packing up their boxes of disks. Glanced over my shoulder and the first guys had vanished, only an empty table showing where they'd been. The Oakleigh Rotary don't seem to care, so long as they get their $10 a stall they don't care what you sell... they certainly don't do anything about stopping it!

Home for lunch, and round two of attacking the garden. I'm sure glad we didn't buy a bigger garden! Go away for two weekends and it goes feral, knee high grass and a potato vine threatening to climb from the fence in through the front door.

Late in the afternoon it was tandem time again — a leisurely ride along bike tracks in the general direction of Jells Park. We should have known better, bike tracks are hard enough to navigate on a normal bicycle, on the tandem they are well-nigh impassable. Merely finding and staying on the track is a task in itself. When off-road the path vanishes under mud, gravel, into trees and leaves, back onto the roads and it suddenly dissappears in the middle of Mount Waverley. Several U-turns, numerous curses, some half-remembered previous attempts and inspired guesswork eventually found our way to the park. Along the way we met another bunch of riders, equally lost and confused. It doesn't help when you reach a T-intersection to find arrows pointing clearly both left and right, each labelled “bike route.” No indication of which bike route, or where it is going! Then there is the nightmare of the tiny little chicanes, presumably because the council doesn't want cyclists to ride out onto the road — hard enough to navigate on an ordinary bike, they become major obstacles for a tandem, for anyone with panniers, for a tricycle, a recumbant or anyone towing children in a trailer.

The last twenty four hours have thoroughly tested the new rain gauge! 17mm of rain on Tuesday, 35mm in the twelve hours to eight o'clock last night, then a further 55mm overnight. 104mm in just over a day, some kind of a record for Melbourne, especially in the middle of summer!

One big old tree down along Haughton road, two smaller scrubby things knocked the fence over at the corner of Monash University, the only other thing I noticed was how marvellously clean all the roads were today — the broken glass, bits of car, and assorted crap is all gone.

The BBC and the estate of Terry Nation have reached an agreement, Daleks will be returning in the new series of Doctor Who. Even more fun, the company that makes the Robosapien robot will be making radio-controlled daleks. I want one!