TRAIN HOLIDAY DAY THREE

Well I've now explored Pyramid Hill the town quite thoroughly, and 
although I chickened out of forcing my sore feet up the rough track 
to the top of the hill itself, I did walk a 360 around its 
perimeter. It's certainly a striking erruption of rock, which 
apparantly propped up the monument-rich Major Mitchell in the 1830s 
to ponder the broad view up there of the surrounding land and 
propose a large irregation system to turn the surrounding country 
into fertile farmlands. This was dutifully acheived by the end of 
that cenury, a point of success that the community seems very proud 
of.

The modern town is over a kilometer away from the hill, which was 
also named by Maj. Mitchell, based on a resemblence that's from 
most angles quite accurate for a natural formaion, although surely 
not to the satisfaction of a power-craved ancient egyption. There 
were once buildings quite nearby including a school and two hotels, 
but they withered away. Actually it seems like most of them burnt 
down in the early 20th century based on the fates descrived on the 
information board. I know fires were more easily started by 
accident before the days of electricity, but jeeze it seems you 
need to think hard before striking a match around these parts. 
Otherwise the town just seemed to have been spread out in general 
and centred around the current location when the train station was 
built in the current middle of the town in the mid 1880s.

A comprehensive set of information signs around town explain the 
history of many old buildings present and passed, which I surveyed 
for a couple of hours this morning. I actually quite like this 
town, small but with lots of interesting and sometimes grand old 
buildings, very few of which are noticably abandoned even though 
there's little sign of any new building going on. It all looks 
remarkably stable at a time when country towns are either dying 
with the closure of their last store, or bursting with new housing 
going up as quickly as the faultering building industry can manage. 
The people are nice too.

If I remember correctly, the original incarnation of this hotel, 
built in the 1880s as I said in the last post, actually burnt down 
in the twenties and the building that I'm staying in was built in 
1928 (probably quite contemporary with the wardrobe and dresser 
still in this room actually). The general store also burnt down 
around the same time (it does make you wonder what was going on), 
being rebuilt in the early thirties as an old-fashioned department 
store with 'Mediterranean' style architecture featuring a curved 
tiled roof, white arched verandah covering the footpath, and a 
distinctive clocktower that now iconifies the town (in addition of 
course to pyramids, which pop up modestly in all sorts of places).

I visited the store there, glad to be able to enter shops in a town 
I'm visiting without looking suspicious by bringing with me my 
large bag of luggage. It's mainly an independent supermarket now, 
but still trying to sell other goods in a quaint hang over from its 
department store origins. It's an impressive old building that's 
impressively run down for an operating business. Under the verandah 
there's an old pressed-tin ceiling which is bulging worringly in 
various places and has been roughly patched up in some. Inside 
there are massive original skylights inside which unfortunately 
need cleaning so it's nevertheless quite dark. The clock in the 
clocktower's stopped of course. It's currently run by a Chinese 
couple and the wife seems to make a habit of trying to interest the 
locals in some discounted non-grocery item at every purchase, 
without much success. The boots she mentioned to one local were 
somewhat interesting, but then I remembered that I'd have to carry 
them on and off trains on the way back. Instead I found their used 
DVD section, man of the covers being faded, which must have taken 
quite a long time in that light! They were also a bit pricy for 
ex-rentals, at $10 for three, but the selection was good, mainly in 
cardboard boxes surrounding the actual DVD shelves, and it seems 
they've been run through one of those DVD cleaner machines. So I 
got six and a couple of pocket tissue packs which were the 
practical cause for me going in there, since the weather this time 
of year makes my nose run terribly.

In spite of the noise from the band (and as it turned out the 
partying that continued on into the early hours of the morning 
afterwards) keeping me up late, my usual tendency to wake up early 
when sleeping in an unusual place kicked in. By 6AM I figured it 
was actually a great opportunity to beat others to that bathroom 
with a bath. That worked great, and I actually rushed more than I 
needed to because it wasn't until 7:30AM that signs of other life 
started to be heard. It's a 1960s shower-bath, which which everyone 
else obvously just uses for the shower part because the cold tap 
for the bath doesn't turn on at all. So I ended up using the bath 
tap for hot water and cold water from the shower head. Rather slow, 
so I only got it a third full before I worried (unnescessarily) 
that I might be tying it up too long and got in, still then I 
finally got to enjoy a bath after all that effort. Whereas 
yesterday this place was fully booked (thirteen rooms plus the 
cabin at the distant caravan park also run by the hotel), tonight 
I'm the only person upstairs so I should have the bathroom all to 
myself tomorrow morning before I leave to catch the morning train. 
I checked out the downstairs ones earlier and they've been 
renovated, so I guess it's lucky they ran out of puff with the 
upstairs rennovation work or they'd have probably taken out the 
bath.

I made up for the short night's sleep with a couple of naps in here 
following my morning and afternoon adventures. I can't really sleep 
on the train but at least my feet will get a rest tomorrow during 
the trip back, the blister has gone but they've just had enough at 
this point. No music tonight, and thankfully the dog across the 
road has stopped trying to make up for that by barking. One tap on 
the shaving basin in this room is slightly leaking and dripping on 
the stainless steel bowl which makes a ringing sound, but now I've 
figured out what that noise is I think I can fix it with a suitably 
placed towell. It didn't get too cold last night and I only used 
one extra blanket for half the night, even though the minimum 
temperatures are still going down under 5degC at nights lately. 
With its solid brick internal walls I think this building stores 
plenty of heat from the moderately warm daytimes. I was basing my 
expectations on my heat-leaky house at home.

Anyway for all my doubts before I started, and some near 
calamities, this trip has panned out quite well, even with my 
over-ambitious itinerary. This EeePC has been great too - it was 
well worth the trouble of pulling apart a bunch of old laptop 
battery packs to find one with a good set of Li-ion cells to use as 
replcements for the extremely icky ones that were in this ASUS Eee 
PC 701SD's pack (new Li-ion cells are way too expensive). Besides 
checking line closure updates when the first train was late (even 
though that only caused extra worry) and finding my way to the 
motel yesterday, I don't have a TV in this room so I've been using 
it to watch the videos (of old TV documentaries) that I downloaded 
at the motel instead. The motel room did have a TV, but I didn't 
have time to use it at all, so that sort-of balanced out nicely. 
It's a great little video viewer (for the low-res videos I download 
at least), imagine those silly people with smartphones and tablets 
who have to hold them up vertical the whole time! I just plonk it 
on a book on my lap while I lay in the bed and tilt the screen to 
suit. The sound is quite good too for what it is. Writing these 
posts is getting me used to the mini keyboard too. Good thing I 
packed an extra-long two-prong power cable so that I can reach a 
power point in the room with the charger while in bed too.

Here I've been using the mobile broadband modem that I use at home 
for internet access. It's only ever found 3G signal here in Pyramid 
Hill even though it was on 4G in Kerang when I was looking at maps. 
Another place where Telstra's current 4G situation seems rather 
dubious before the planned 3G switch-off next year. It might just 
be that frequency issue again though.

Anyway on that note I'd better check the V/Line website to make 
sure there are still have trains running to take me home tomorrow. 
Then after that I'll be able to get to sleep at a decent hour 
tonight.

 - The Free Thinker