Melbourne to Hillston

With the 2024 AFL Grand Final done and dusted we have time to fit in our second Aussie Road Trip for the year. Not to mention our third holiday for 2024. Living the dream!

After catching up with the family down in Drouin yesterday for lunch, this morning we finished packing the truck and headed out of Melbourne on the Hume Highway. Having travelled the Hume Highway several times in the last few years we veered off at Wallan onto the Northern Highway towards Heathcote where we stopped to stretch our legs. We could have popped into Gaffney’s Bakery but had set our sights on Echuca for our lunch break. So, it was just a short stop to photograph a couple of Heathcote’s historic buildings and then back on the road.

We drove through Elmore before stopping for another stretch in Rochester at the GrainCorp silos featuring a squirrel glider and an azure kingfisher both painted by artist Jimmy Dvate in 2018. I thought this silo art seemed familiar, but Bernie didn’t agree. After viewing these two silos we walked around to discover a third silo featuring a platypus. OK, now I was uncertain because I couldn’t remember seeing silo art featuring a platypus before??

Back in the car I HAD to check my memories i.e. search my photo roll for photos of Rochester. Yes! I found a photo of the the silos dated the 10^th of November 2021. Hmmn, perhaps my memory is better than I think it is. Although we still couldn’t recall quite how we came to be passing through Rochester in 2021? D’Oh, just look at the rest of the photos around that date and see what I was photographing. That would be the trip we did to visit the silo art trail around Benalla when we decided to return to Melbourne via silo art in Rochester and Colbinabbin. And Googling as I write this, the reason I/we couldn’t recall the platypus. Well, that silo wasn’t painted until December 2021.

We arrived in Echuca just after noon and made our way straight to the Beechworth Bakery in Echuca. We were planning to have our first vanilla slices for the holiday … after healthy salad rolls of course! Oh no, the vanilla slices had pink icing and that is just WRONG! Bernie decided to have a French vanilla slice and I opted for a bee sting.

Salad rolls and cakes in their baggies we drove down to the Port of Echuca Discovery Centre where we found a park bench where we could enjoy our lunch looking out over the Murray River. Bernie dropped a piece of ham out of his roll and within moments a magpie hopped along to claim it. We thought it would be straight down the hatch but the magpie spent ages rubbing the (very) small piece of ham in the dirt. I guess it thought that it was killing the worm before swallowing it?? I watched the magpie while I ate my roll and my cake and I never did see it swallow the ham.

The historic wharf is very commercialized these days and the only way to set foot on the actual wharf is if you buy an entry ticket. We think it is around 40 years since we last visited so quite a change from the last time we were here. We had to walk all the way to the end of the wharf before we could venture anywhere near the bank of the river.

Anyhow, just passing through today so after a quick photo of the Paddle Steamer ‘Canberra’ it was back to the car to continue today’s journey. We crossed the Murray River to Moama and found ourselves on the Long Paddock Tourist Route on the Cobb Highway. This hadn’t come up in any pre-holiday research so had to Google on the go to discover that the route is named for the drovers who used to drive their cattle through the harsh and unforgiving plains of southwest NSW grazing them in the ‘long paddock’ along the route.

There are Long Padock Visitor Sites all along the route that feature interpretative boards featuring history and stories of the Long Paddock. Perhaps if we had known before we travelled we could have factored in some time to explore these?? Highlights that we did manage to stop for were the BIG Murray Cod at Mathoura and the Peppin Heritage Centre and Water Tower Art at Deniliquin. We made a couple of wrong turns trying to track down the water tower, but glad that we found the kookaburra mural by artist Cam Scale that was completed in July 2019. The kookaburras were certainly representative as we spotted eight today sitting on the power lines alongside the road.

Around Wanganella we drove past a ‘cow’ sign which made a change from seeing the ‘kangaroo’ signs. Sure enough, not long afterwards, there were cows on the road. The Long Paddock is still alive and well even today. And it’s flat, so FLAT. The site I found about exploring The Long Paddock informed us that the Hay Plains are renowned as the flattest place in the Southern Hemisphere! The stand of gum trees at Sixteen Mile Gums certainly stood out on the horizon as we approached.

In Hay we made a quick stop at the IGA Supermarket to buy some fruit for tomorrow morning’s breakfast. Despite being remote the fresh produce was, well, fresh and tasty looking and the staff were very friendly.

When we reached Booligal we had to leave the Cobb Highway behind. The Long Paddock route continues north westerly through Ivanhoe to Wilcannia, but we needed to head north easterly towards Hillston on the Lachlan Valley Way to reach the bed that we had booked for tonight at the Hillston Motor Inn on High. Fortunately, the weather has been fine as we discovered at this point that the Lachlan Valley Way is a dry weather only road! With this route having been suggested to us by Apple Maps it would have been very inconvenient to arrive at the turn off to find the road closed due to rain. A significant back track and detour via the Midwestern and Kidman Highways would have ensued. Lucky!

The unsealed section of the Lachlan Valley wasn’t too bad. A bit rutted in places suggesting that vehicles have driven on it when it has been wet and they have carved up the surface. Bernie managed to drop the truck into only one jaw crunching hole along the way. Despite quite a few Ks on the unmade road it was only we returned to the bitumen that an oncoming vehicle flicked a stone up at us that smacked onto the roof rack and then bounced across the roof rack noisily before dropping off the other side. Lots of noise, but no damage done.

Arriving in Hillston we found our last silo/water tower art for the day at the corner of Aidan and High Streets. The Hillston Water Tower Art by Scott Nagy and Krimsone is titled ‘Sunset Over the Lachlan’ and features wildlife that is found in and around the Lachlan River, Australia’s fourth longest river.

We continued along High Street and past our motel as we ventured out into the industrial zone to find the BP Servo. With the truck refuelled ready for tomorrow we returned to the motel to complete our check-in and catch up with Cathy and Steve who travelled a different (more direct?) route today between Melbourne and Hillston.

Only one choice in town for dinner tonight, the Club House Hotel. As we checked in we were advised that we should head to dinner early rather than leave it too late with it being the only venue offering meals tonight. As soon as we unloaded the car we headed out to dinner. Classic pub fare tonight. Three of us went with the crumbed lamb cutlet special and Bernie opted for a beef schnitty.