February 24th - Melbourne to Omeo (Victoria)

Melbourne, the city of brotherly love especially at the peak of rush hour.

Melbourne
Into Melbourne it was for the next couple of days. Staying with the Mafioso of chicken feather plucker's for the southern region. The wife runs a hit team of Sicilian goomba's out of chinatown for the local triads. Any how life is good when you don't have to worry about whether or not the tent is going to be wet or dry the next morning. While there the sleeping bag was hung out for a good airing. Unbeknown to me but there was a major die off of flies and birds in the surrounding area.

Melbourne to Wangaratta
With a bit of drizzle on the way out of Melbourne, it was north through Kinglake National Park. Next onto Yea, Seymour, Euroa (pretty boring ride as most of this is on motorway). Heading to Merton (B366) was nice then Mansfield, Whitfield (good) and a finally flat run to Wangaratta. Once off the motorway the roads were interesting and with enough curves to satisfy any biker.

Wangaratta to Omeo
Motorway to Wodonga with a quick turn to Albury. Over the bridge to Hume Dam where the water level has dropped at least 50 meters. Turned for Bellbridge (C542) and followed the Murray Valley Hwy. Following the road as it parallels the Murray River, the GPS is showing me the water level to the roads edge. In reality what you are seeing is dry, dry open land with a very small amount of river water moving through the area.

Once you get near the source of the Murray River, the water is running strong and up to the top of the river bank. This leads us to a bit of a problem; one, are the user's down stream exceeding their limit or two has the volume of annual water from the mountains dropped that much over the last 5-10 years? Me thinks the end user's are probably the biggest problem. Anyhow around to Corryong stopping a bit for mom's apple pie. Next it is route C545 gravel (70km) south to Omeo. Did manage to fall over with bike and all coming out of the petrol station at Corryong. Bike engine cut out and I was already committed to the turn. No damage but did I ever look go! Back to the gravel road to Omeo, good shape and a very enjoyable ride. Pulled into Omeo and it was the caravan site for the next 2 nights.

Omeo
First off on this bright morning we have a flat front tire. This gets taken care of at the petrol station. While at the petrol station a bloke walks over to me and notices the Department of Defense sticker on the bike. Find out that he is a retired Army SAS and had done exchange duty with various US Navy Seal teams in Vietnam. Not knowing whether or not to believe him until he mentions a particular Seal that was my swim buddy while doing underwater trials in Key West, Florida back in the late 1970's. He was killed in the Panama screwup. What a small world! Tire fixed and it was going north via the Blue Duck Hotel, now for sale, until I take the gravel road to Falls Creek. What a nasty patch of road, corrugations to the nth degree. Once you get to the end of the road near Falls Creek, the road does get a bit better reason being that they are in the process of sealing the road altogether.

So, sealed road to Mount Beauty, sun is shinning, next over the mountain to Bright. Getting to Bright the weather gets nasty, you know where I am going with this, take the left for Omeo. It starts to rain, then the fog moves in and the visibility drop's to less then 50 meters. I am in deep .........and the only way I can figure out where I am going is to follow the yellow lines on the road. My speed for the next 2 hours never gets above 20km/h. It had to be the worst driving conditions that I've been in yet in all of my travels in both New Zealand and OZ. Once I got within 15km of Omeo and a major drop in elevation the weather finally cleared up.

Got back to the caravan site and moved myself up to a cabin with a heater. And did it blow and rain that night in Omeo while I watched the late, late night movies and drank a fine glass of wine. Working with due diligence throughout the night, all of the clothes were dry for departure next morn.

The Grey Nomad