TRAIN HOLIDAY DAY TWO

Somehow, it's only the second day of my holiday. I guess I've been 
packing a lot in. Three towns, five train/bus services, one and a 
half rolls of film. It seems like ages since I wrote my last post, 
yesterday. Ages ao and a world away, but then again neither is 
remotely true. I'm still in rural Victoria typing out my nonsense 
on an obsolete computer for an audience of who knows, and it's only 
Friday.

It wasn't a promising start. The first train was fifty minutes 
late, a new record for that daily service into Melbourne, 
surpassing the half-hour of last time, and plenty of time to wonder 
whether the frequently broken description of the disruptions caused 
by that rail "breakage" on the V/Line websute had simply omitted 
the cancellation of the service that I was trying to catch (in fact 
it seems unlikely that it had anything to do with it). But it 
arrived, and luckily I was connecting with the Bendigo service 
which isn't reserved and runs hourly. None of the others were like 
that though, so I'm very glad that it has turned out to be the only 
one seriously late, with only two left to go.

The reserviour I wanted to visit in Bendigo on the way to Kerang 
didn't pan out. The bush tracks didn't go where I thought they 
went, or I just took wrong ones. I ended up just following a fence 
around the perimeter of some still active gold mine workings (small 
scale by the looks of it, maybe just looking through old spoil 
heaps for stuff missed in centuries past), fighting my way through 
the bushes, and I eventually got onto a road that the map shows 
going to the reservoir. But the further I walked down it, the room 
beside the road kept getting narrower and the traffic heavier, so 
eventually when I saw a properly-signposted walking track into 
Bendigo (I was walking rom Kangaroo Flat - ~6Km as the crow flies, 
but I very much don't fly like a crow) I decided that skipping the 
dam was much safer.

The walking track was nice, feelng isolated even with the sound of 
the city in the background (outer suburbs of Bendigo sort of 
surround the park area in the south), and plenty of old mine 
workings to spot. I even found a small lake which was a water 
catchment at least. It did dump me out at an unidentified road 
though - one of those major ones where it's so obvious to everyone 
which road it is that they don't bother to signpost it at any of 
the intersections. Unable to match anything to my maps I eventually 
went down a suburban street and followed signs of civilisation such 
as paved footpaths backed up by compass bearings. The led me onto 
another anonymous main road along which the houses got 
progressively older, a good sign I was heading towards the centre 
where the station is. Eventually I found out I was on the road I 
intended to follow after visiting the reservoir - from the address 
of a house printed on a For Sale sign. I'll admit it, GPS does have 
its uses, but at least this keeps me sharp and even with an hour 
lost to the typical fault of V/Line I still had four hours to kill 
there somehow.

I will admit that those last couple of blocks to the station felt 
really rather long, albeit adorned with some impressively fancy old 
houses. I did have to cary my large-ish old shoulder-strapped 
travel bag with me the whole way, and until my body woke up from 
spending most of the say sitting on or waiting for trains, I wasn't 
sure that I was going to make it further than one Km. but I got 
there, and after making sure of the platform where my the next 
train was to depart (lesson learnt from Footscray station in 
melbourne - the presence of prominent timetables for your train on 
a platform does not mean that it ever departs from that platform!), 
I still had two hours to get a meal for tea.

It took me some more walking about to settle on pizza, I was going 
for fish and chips but somehow couldn't find a place. Got on the 
train half dead. I had window seats reserved but the person next to 
me had always borded first and slid over, then of course it seems 
silly to make a fuss over it, but it irks me that they then spend 
the whole journey looking at their phone anyway. Very few others 
seems to a afflicted with my problem of getting motion sickness 
from looking at a screen or book while in a vehicle. Of course the 
reason I got a seat by the window that time was it was 8PM and all 
to be seen through it was blackness after leaving Bendigo.

I alighted at Kerang, a place of such quiet at 10PM that it sounded 
almost like back at home. On the way to the motel I really enjoyed 
wandering through past the shops in town all completely quiet and 
with no cars or people to be seen. It'm amazing how much noise ATMs 
make just doing nothing when there's no other sound to drown them 
out. Unfortunately the motel wasn't where I thought it was going to 
be, and after quite a bit of randomly wandering past deserted 
storefronts I had to give in and fire up this eeePC 701SD (just 
bout able to run Firefox usably since I maxed its RAM out at 2GB, 
and light enough to carry easily) to check the address in Open 
Streep Map, then in Google Maps because it turned out that Open 
Street Map couldn't fine it either. It turns out I'd marked it a 
coulple of blocks away on the same road for some reason.

So I got there pretty late, and with some fairly sore feet. Before 
bed I did manage to set Wget grabbing a long list of stuff onto a 
memory stick using the motel WiFi. Unfortunately it turned out to 
mysteriously lose connection shortly afterwards and didn't get 
going again propely until after 7AM - a slow fade out though, so 
I'm not sure it could be explained by them turning off the WiFi at 
night to foil the plans of patrons like myself. I did get 5GB worth 
of stuff downloaded still, which is an entire monthly quota's worth 
for me.

Just before the required check-out time of 10AM, and braving a 
blister on my foot, I set out today to explore Kerang in the 
morning. I walked down beside the river running to the West of the 
township, besides the museum, which unfortunately only opens 
Sundays but had a few intteesting bits of machinery displayed 
outside. The observation tower contructed on top of a brick water 
tower built in 1883 looked like it might no longer be open, 
especially as it was adorned with an asbestos warning sign, but 
following the advice of a website I asked in the adjacent library 
and they were happy to unlock the door and let me in. A great view, 
and an excellent look at the original engineering of the structure 
and tank on the way up as well.

There's not a great deal else to do in Kerang. I read a newspaper 
in the library before following a history guide map from its 
information centre section back to the station. Stopping for my 
standard lunch of six year old fruit snack bars and canned apricots 
from expired fire fighting ration packs (also serving me for 
breakfasts, but making up more weight in that damn bag which I had 
to carry all about Kerang too because I'd checked out of the 
motel). Then onto lake Boga by bus (the trains still go through 
there, but only the buses choose to stop, which is quite annoying) 
to see the flying boat museum. I actually saw the sight of the 
hanger from the WWII flying boat base at Kerang, where it was moved 
for use as a goods shed and demolished in 2003 due to termite 
infestation. Last time I saw the flying boat on display at Lake 
Boga was as a child and it was just propped. Now it's in a huge 
shed along with many other displays. But it's also a long way from 
the bus stop, which I didn't realise isn't at the site of the old 
station (even though there's a bus shelter there), but right down 
at the other end of town to the museum. It was a tight schedule 
already to get back for the return bus to Pyramid Hill, which only 
runs on Friday. Long story short I managed to see the museum fairly 
comprehensively, and ended up hitching a lift to the bus stop with 
a couple who'd come down from Queensland with a caravan, though it 
was rather tight.

The bus got to Pyramid Hill at 5:30PM, on time, so I got to the 
hotel, another product of the 1880s with some nice original 
features up here on the second floor where I'm typing this for you 
from my room. Nicest of all is that one of the two shared bathrooms 
actually has a bath - the feature I failed to book in time at the 
motel! I guess I won't be able to tie it up for too long, but it's 
a great surprise and I'll give it a go tomorrow. The rooms have 
actually been done up fairly recently, although the renovation has 
obviously run out of steam at the upstairs hallway and bathrooms. 
The halway has exposed paint-splattered floorboards which people 
make an incredible amount of noise walking down. But noise wise the 
main thing I missed is that the hotel is a music venue, so I'm 
waiting to see when they're going to stop playing and I have a 
chance at getting to sleep (based on the cheer and packing-up 
clunks, I think it might have just happened at about 11:30PM... 
nope). It is at another end of the building so at least it's not 
that bad. The music is pretty good too so I'm not really 
complaining. I saw them playing for a bit when I went down for 
dinner earlier, placing an order in the same small room as a live 
band isn't easy.

I'm easing my way out of my own frantic holiday pace with a two 
night stay here, where tomorrow I've got a whole day to explore one 
small country town (albeit with a surprisingly active solitary 
pub), and its namesake hill. Then Sunday I leave at 8AM to spend 
the best part of the day just sitting through the train ride back 
home again (or as near as public transport will get me to it, which 
is actually much further away than even I'd think of walking). It's 
a fun view of the street out the window too, perfect for people 
watching. It's a shame there's no heating, the leads for the 
electric blanket don't even reach either of the power points, and 
the window closes with a gap. but I found some extra blankets in 
the nice antique wardrobe in the corner, so I think I'm fine.

Now the band's finished. It sounds like they're staying up here 
too, they're singing their way up here as I type. Goodnight.

 - The Free Thinker