Day 40 - The Road To Gundagai

Sue slept in. I wanted to, after a 1:00am call from our daughter, who has returned from Greece with an extra passenger. It was joyous news but when a phone rings at 1:00am, it takes a while for your heart rate to slow down enough to allow sleep to return.

In the place of sleep, I woke to a rainy sunrise, so did some writing on the verandah while Sue played the lady in the four poster bed.

The Victoria Hotel

It’s raining in Rutherglen this morning

soft kissing the tin-roofed verandah

outside our window.

Little secrets about our love affair

being whispered here and there

between smiles and approval.

The Victoria holds its lover’s stories

seeped into her bones

on hot summer harvest nights.

Disguises cast to the wooden boards

as promises were made and kept

either side of lace veils over open windows.

In the Sunday night stillness

a last toast to time

before we penned our chapter

and the rain

and the roof

smiled as if

we were the first.

We parked the van in a park near a dam and ate breakfast while a storm ranted outside town. The public toilets were superbly clean and even included a small white board to note when they were cleaned last. The most current entry told me the toilets were cleaned last at 5:30pm tomorrow night. Even cleaners are becoming apocalyptic.

It was an unpleasant day – overcast and some rain – and the wind driving up from the south west, so for once, was to our advantage. We stopped for supplies in Wodonga and eventually lunch but drove on in the afternoon toward what should have been Jugiong and the showground. By the time we reached Gundagai, we’d had enough for the day and booked into the Top Tourist C’van Park instead.

Much of the excitement of new places has been replaced in this last week by the warmth and familiarity of friends and family over this last week. It will be entertaining to finally catch up with Amanda and Kevin, two newer friends we met in the UK and Ireland in 2012 and have been trying to reacquaint with ever since! On the weekend, in the final throws, we’ll catch up with Dad at Camden and the newly pregnant couple (David and Sarah) before our reluctant return to home on Sunday afternoon.

All of this, of course, in but an entrée for the main course next year.