Day 5: Gundagai > Albury

Don’t you just love clean underwear day?

Last night we stayed at the Gundagai Tourist Park. It must be the first place that I have ever stayed where Percy got to live undercover for the night.

Let me tell you a little bit about van life. There is something to be said for sleeping in the same bed every night, but waking up in a different town every morning. Apart from the fact that Percy is a great deal smaller than our house, the biggest concession with van living is the size of the hot water system.

Percy has a HWS that holds about 17 litres (might be less, might be more, but it’s not a great deal of hot water whatever it is).

You know how sometimes you just feel like having a long, hot shower? Not possible in a van. You can have a long shower, or you can have a hot shower, but you can’t get both options. It’s either door 1 or door 2.

I needed a long hot shower, so I went over to the amenities block … which is actually a number of ensuite sites that have been labelled “shared access”. So I ran the shower until it was nice and hot, and jumped in … and it went cold. Some jiggery pokery with the taps and I got it hot again, jumped right back in and … it went cold again.

It seems that there was an undocumented feature with the shower I was using where – if you waited long enough – it would alternate between “peel your skin off” scaldingly hot, and then fade to “someone hand me an ice pick” freezingly cold.

So once I’d figured that out, I figured that if I jumped in within the 10 or so nanoseconds that the water was at a pleasant temperature on it’s way to scalding hot or freezing cold, you could have a nice (well, nice-ish) shower.

Which brings me to the second problem.

Cast your mind back to your year 5 science, and how a larger body exerts a gravitational pull over smaller bodies. Smaller bodies are attracted to larger bodies.

For the extended periods between times where the shower was a pleasant and safe temperature, I had to stand away from the water, close to the plastic shower curtain. Large body, small body, gravitational forces.

As I stood there waiting for the shower to heat up or cool down, inevitably the shower curtain would be attracted to my larger body and would stick to me. If the cadence of the shower curtain attraction and sticking had aligned to the hot/cold cadence of the water, the world would have been a happy place.

But alas, no 🙁 First world problems! I spent the time alternately peeling the shower curtain off my body and jumping in and out of the shower.

We were pretty zonked last night so we called it a night just before 9.00pm, and I was sleeping the sleep of the dead just a few moments later. I woke in the dark, thinking it was the middle of the night but it was actually about 6.15am. Dark and cold, so I turned the fan heater on and we went back to sleep until about 7.00am.

The Gundagai Tourist Park have a feature called “stay and weigh”, where you can get your car and van weighed for the princely sum of $30. So after a shower, breakfast and coffee, I wandered over to the park office to book in for a weigh. Paid my $30 to the nice lady – her name is Kerry Taylor as it happens – and went back to hook up Percy, and line up and get him weighed.

Now it would be impolite to tell you Elsie’s weight, but let’s just say that Gary (the weighbridge guy) just smiled and said it was all good news – Elsie and Percy’s combined weights is ~100kg less than the legal limit, so we are all good. And if I drop that 50 litres or so of water in the tanks, it will be even better.

He had nothing nice to say about drivers of a particular make of large vehicle** (I think he used a rude word that rhymed with “bankers”) because they seem to believe that “[these vehicles] can carry/tow/pull anything”, and that they are regularly and seriously overloaded. And the drivers of these vehicles just smile and say “she’ll be right, mate, it’s a …” **

But that’s just his opinion. I have my own view on drivers of those vehicles** that I will keep to myself 🙂

** Author’s note: The make of vehicle has been edited out at MBW’s suggestion. It was only a suggestion, but I had to keep in mind who made the suggestion, and consider the future happiness of this trip.

Weighed and hooked up, and we were ready to hit the town. All reports are that the jail is worth seeing (4.9/5 stars from 29 reviews) so we went to the information office to buy our tickets, only to be told that the jail was not particularly accessible for the mobility impaired (aka MBW) … so we looked at the marble masterpiece instead.

Actually, the nice lady at the information centre not only told us about the jail, but also about how her fourth child was a surprise, but that is OK because her sister is unable to have children after having her pelvis crushed, so she has cats instead.

She must have thought we were associated with Lifeline, but frankly we (I) got WAY more information about childbearing that I really needed to know. Or wanted to know. I can only pretend to be interested in a conversation like that for a short time and my eyes start to glaze over … and glaze they did.

Oh, and she also dropped a motorcycle on her foot once, breaking it, so she was also in a moon boot and on crutches once … so she and MBW shared a moment or two …

So we escaped from the information office and back to Elsie and did a quick lap of the town centre before heading out of town towards tonight’s accommodation at the Albury Showgrounds.

It was a lovely day for a drive in the country. Cool (Gundagai had a temperature range of 4 degrees to 8 degrees today), mostly clear skies, and not too much traffic. We didn’t have a great deal of fuel onboard, but figured we could make it to Albury without stopping (for fuel).

No chance that we could make it to Albury without stopping at all, though 🙁

Gundagai to Albury is only about a 2 hour drive and at about the 1 hour mark, I saw those three little words that make me go weak at the knees.

Coffee. Shop. Ahead.

Joe’s coffee at Tarcutta NSW to be precise. Tarcutta is a pretty little RV friendly town (population 446) with plenty of spaces to pull up off the main road through town, just outside Joe’s Coffee and neighbouring shops.

Almost all of which were closed, including Joe’s Coffee. It looked like Joe hadn’t made coffee there for quite some time. In fact, I suspect that Tarcutta probably has a population of 445 now, because I suspect that Joe may be no more.

RIP Joe.

As luck would have it, a craft shop was open. A lovely old man ran the craft shop. He used to be a two-fingered typist until he cut off one of his fingers ”making one of those fruit bowls over there” … and the paramedics never found it.

We then learned that he had the hots for the Head Nurse at the Nursing Home where he worked, but she rejected his advances, but continued to flirt with him. You know where this is going, right?

They eventually got married in 2004 … so that means that he is waaaay to old to have any child-bearing stories to share, but he did share that he has spent the last 19 years winning over the step children. He lives at Wagga, which is only …. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

If travelling with someone who is mobility impaired means that I have to hear everyone’s life stories, I’m going home right now!!! Here is 40c so you can call Lifeline – I’m sure that they care.

Here is another fun fact. Tarcutta won the Tidy Towns award in 1996 – about 27 years ago. Seriously, that was something to boast about in 1996 and 1997, and maybe even up to 1999 … but 1996 was last century! And they only got third place.

Onwards and upwards towards Albury again, albeit still uncaffienated.

Next stop was another very pretty little RV friendly town called Holbrook (population 1715) with a functioning – and open – coffee shop.

We stopped to have a look at the submarine HMAS Otway (nope, I don’t understand how or why a submarine is embedded in concrete at Holbrook, NSW either), then on to the coffee shop.

I probably don’t need to mention the weather, but it was cold again. In your bones cold.

We caffienated then did a quick walk around town to have a look in the local Op Shop to buy a couple of things that we really didn’t need – mainly some books. We also found a craft shop, and we all know how much MBW loves craft shops.

Spoiler alert!! We bought a couple of things for our most-recent granddaughter, and our very-soon-to-arrive other grandchild.

Having supported the local economy, we were back into Elsie and onwards towards Albury – less than an hour down the road … and almost out of fuel.

Staying at the Albury Showgrounds for a couple of nights to look around and see the sights.

First stop after setting up and having lunch was a trip into Victoria (only about 5 km away) because the fuel is much cheaper in Wodonga than in Albury. We then went to a very pretty little nature reserve called Yindyamarra Sculpture Walk where there is local artwork and sculptures installed, right alongside the mighty Murray River.

It was quite a distance to look at all of the sculptures, and frankly I didn’t want to be out in public with MBW any more than I needed to, for fear of having to listen to someone else’s life story, particularly if it concerns a medical condition or child bearing.

A few groceries from Woolies, and back to the showgrounds for some dinner. The showgrounds have some very new facilities but setting up on the grass was a challenge … because most of the ”grass areas” are actually mud. The only variation across the grounds is the depth and wetness of the mud.

If I go for a ”long hot shower” at the amenities block tonight, I suspect I will come back dirtier than I went.

Before I go though, I do need to say that I am concerned about Dolly. I know I’ve had a bit of a rant about Sydney streets, but it might be Dolly’s fault. I think Dolly is losing it.

This afternoon’s quick orientation of Albury took us down many back-streets, around roundabouts, through school zones … round and round and round. I’m going to have to see if there is another voice in our navigation system and give them a try. Dolly doesn’t seem to understand that we just want the shortest route between A and B.

Anyhow, despite everything it was a great day and I’m excited about going exploring Albury Wodonga tomorrow.

This is what today looked like. 198km and 4h 31m of driving.

PS: I was kidding about clean underwear day. Every day is clean underwear day. Some things are simply not negotiable.

Ciao

#RoadTripNSW2023