Peter Be Sensible

Breakfast was hearty, but restrained compared to the foot-long sausages on the plate of the man next to us. I know how he justifies it: he was cycling his way around the country.

We really have to tuck away some kilometres today. Tonight’s accommodation is booked in Carlton. Essentially, we’re doing Adelaide to Melbourne, with Hahndorf in Adelaide’s Hills giving us a teensy head start.

The best silo art seen so far is in Coonalpyn, South Australia. It’s a reasonably busy place, but there was little else to keep us there for long. Foot down, Bordertown! With a few more little towns passing under the Pug’s tyres, we reached Bordertown. I was not to know I’d be spending a couple of nights there on my return solo drive to Perth and, in the process, appreciating it and learning about it a little more.

All travellers mark their journey milestones in one form or another. Grazia and I photographed ourselves next to signs, a fairly universal celebration of such things. As I was readying my selfie stick, I happened to glance up to the road for 3 seconds. Precisely then, two motorcyclists on adventure tourers rode past. These guys knew their mission. Their high-riding touring machines were adorned with panniers, picks, and camping equipment. They had compact roll-up mattresses stashed diagonally across the exterior of their backpacks. As I looked at them, they telepathically and simultaneously raised their right hands in a fist pump. And then they were… gone. They were oblivious to the fleeting joy they gave another traveller. How surprised would they even be that someone saw it and is now writing about it? They could have been from anywhere in the world, and celebrating the next phase of their journey. Or they could be coming home. Either way, they warmed my insides, and they didn’t even know they were doing it.

We looked left and right at Nhill and Horsham. I did want to show Grazia a favourite place of mine at Ballarat. We drove around Lake Wendouree in the freezing bloody cold, and then headed to a little nondescript park at the top of Eureka Street. We got out and walked around the rolling green turf. We were standing on the grounds of the Eureka Stockade of December 3, 1854. It is one of our nation’s defining events and represented the birth – some say – of Australian democracy. Okay, it wasn’t the federation of the states that happened much later. But it gave Australians of diverse backgrounds the courage to stick up for what’s right, and do it repeatedly throughout the decades. The dead and surviving miners effected real change.

It’s interesting to see how it was reported overseas, and the photo gallery explains some of this. The British saw it as insolence. The French and Americans thought it was wonderful and courageous. It’s sad the place’s history isn’t shouted loud and clear when you drive past it. Only a sculpture of gold stakes dug into the ground and the discreet presence of the quite excellent MADE – The Museum of Australian Democracy – provide the inquisitive passer-by with any clue at all. I guess our silence on the subject means we are, in our hearts, still willing subjects of Her Majesty.

It was theoretically possible to eke out a few more kilometres to declare the Pug a ‘thousand kilometre’ car. We were clearly going to get to Melbourne on over a thousand kilometres to a tank, but our earlier sheer cliff-face terror on realising that Iron Knob has no fuel lent us no appetite for pushing economy records again.

Melbourne’s hook turns (mastered beautifully when I lived there), narrow road lanes, street lighting glinting off the wet and greasy tram tracks, and the sheer volume of people trying to get places, is a real baptism of fire for out-of-towners. We were glad to endure no more than the navigation required to our hotel.

Once ensconced in our tiniest hotel room ever, we hit Carlton’s Lygon Street for a celebratory Italian meal, red wine and a glass of black sambucca, also known as Takeyabreffaway. Fantastic stuff.

This marks the end of our journey, with plenty of my own solo experiences to follow.