So in just over a month later, I have my wish, I am doing the trek again, on my terms.

I had planned on sleeping in on the day I was set to leave, but I was awoken by my furry four-legged baby... I don't think he had slept very well, his sixth sense had kept him awake. Hope his grandmummy is giving him lots of loves...

A few last minute errands, had to make sure I had money in the right accounts and return Prune's photos, made a last ditch attempt to contact my friend in Melbourne - I hope she contacts me before I get there - and then packing my car just so, so that everything that I needed would be accessible... and it was lunch time by the time I was ready.

Between errands at the post office and the bank was a fish and chip shop, which I nearly didn't walk into... but then decided to get a steak sandwich for lunch before I left... and there he was, Mr Unreliable.

We live about two blocks apart, and hadn't bumped into each other for the entire time I was here... our talks on MSN Messenger had been a little tense of late, but I hadn't actually seen him for six months... and then on the day I leave... what are the chances?

He looked better than he had, and I must have looked okay too, I realised as he slowly burnt lines up and down my body with his eyes...

But in the short time that we spoke he corrected me twice... no one had quite the nack to make me feel dumb like he does. But there was something different... I was a kid when I met him, I used to put up with it, but I think he realised that I would argue now, after four years of knowing him, I wasn't quite so meek as I used to be, he couldn't put me in my place quite so easily.

Total anticlimax, and a polite goodbye.

Mum came home from work to see me off, and I knew she felt very differently about me leaving this time. I had always considered myself as having left home when I began uni, but in her mind, I was studying interstate... to her I was now leaving for the first time... so I understood the significance.

Also, that I was supposed to be staying, and changed my mind... can't have been easy. Poor Mummy, puts up with a bit from her flighty eldest child... but I was glad I waited until she got home before I left. There hadn't been a time yet when Mum hadn't seen me off.

It's funny when you drive away, instead of fly, like a slow stretch of a goodbye, rather than a quick cut detachment. You start on roads that you've driven many a time... maybe I'm just going to the city... maybe I'm just going to Prune's house... and then you pass them, and you're somewhere New, on a bright clear blue sky day...

It reminds me of a Tolkien poem that's in Lord Of The Rings (my favourite ever book, by the way, which is probably why I have the poem memorised :)

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began
Now far ahead the Road has gone
And I must follow, if I can
Pursuing it with eager feet
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet
And whither then? I cannot say...

The road from my doorway leads all over Australia, if I care to follow it...

Adelaide is one of the best planned cities in Australia, even down to the perfectly selected location - the city and suburbs are built on flat plains, encicled by a ring of hills, which are basically the cut off line of city and country... depending on where you live, the countryside can be a mere five minutes from the 'city'.

The entrance/exit to Adelaide used to involve a long windy drive through the hills, including a precarious bit of road called Devil's Elbow, a hairpin curve that was the site of at least one truck overturning per week, until finally some bright spark decided we had the technology, and spent shitloads of money on a tunnel which basically cuts right through the section of hills that the road used to wind through. The tunnel and new road took a good couple of years to complete, which seems almost obscene when you drive through it, and ten seconds later you're out the other side...

But it cuts heaps off the journey, it prevents the car sickness I remember as a child, it saves lots of trucks and accidents, and it forms a rather spiffy little gateway to my pretty little city...

I'm hopping state capitals of the Eastern seaboard to reach my final destination, but I decided to take the long way, since I have time...

Adelaide to Melbourne is a relatively short drive, eight hours at an easy pace, if you take the cross country way, which is basically a straight line from one city to the other. I have decided to follow the coast, which effectively adds about five hours onto the journey, but makes for a much more scenic drive, including a stretch on reputedly one of the most beautiful roads in the country, the Great Ocean Road... so far I've liked my choice :)

Along the coastal route is an inlet called the Coorong... I wish I could recall some of my local history, but I know it has some significance for the indigenous people of the area, it really is quite an unusual area.

It was made by sand dunes, basically it is a long thin island that follows the coast for about 100 kms, so close that it is visible from the mainland... except that at one end, it is joined to the mainland, so it is actually, techically speaking, a peninsula.

It is also an absolutely beautiful wetlands region, habitat for many species of birds, and in particular, lots of pelican colonies.

I remember a film I saw at primary school that was set in the Coorong, called Storm Boy, about a young boy who finds three abandoned pelican chicks, and raises them, his favourite being one he names Mr Percival. In the end Mr Percival dies, he is shot by a hunter or poacher or something along those lines... I always used to cry, it was the saddest movie I'd ever seen.

I've never driven right along the Coorong before... when I saw a sign for a pelican reserve, I smiled and thought of Mr Percival.

There really must be something in the water down here, I passed a Pink Lake, which was more a mauve, really - caused by antioxidents in the soil or something - then in Mount Gambier, where I stopped for the night, there's the famous Blue Lake, which really is royal blue, in the crater of what was once a volcano... I can't remember what makes it blue, some kind of chemical again, maybe... strange. I've seen the blue one before though, so I gave it a miss.

Walking the line between cheap and dodgy, I found a reasonably priced hotel, and I was tired so decided to call it a day, even though I'd only done 500 or so kilometres. I was going to take it slow, after all...

Might be since I was tired, I felt vaguely down for a couple of moments when I was holed up in my little room... so I decided to go see a movie, X-Men, for the second time. Oh my, that's sad... but I love those sort of movies.

I always wanted to be different, I thought it was the coolest thing that Sunny had all this interesting heritage, since she's Japanese, and I was just a boring Anglo-Australian... I used to try to talk with an accent all the time, unfortunately I'm crappy at them...

But ah, to be an X Man (x-person?). I would love to be able to read minds...

I had to be out by ten the next morning... hmm, haven't seen too many mornings lately :)

Drove through many pine plantations, they are big boom industry for this state - pines in the south, winerys in the north, and in the outback part, uranium, but we don't talk about that one...

I crossed the South Australia/Victoria border fairly early, and almost immediately the pines were replaced by native vegetation, and signs next to the roads warned of kangaroos... though I have to say they seem to be a lot more street conscious than they used to be, those kangaroos... they watch from the side of the road, occasionally you see them bounding across, but only far ahead... I only saw one by the side of the road, thankfully. They seem fairly smart...

It's the livestock that are dumb :) A silly little calf decided to chase the car before mine yesterday, into the middle of the road. Luckily there was a fair distance betweenus, I had time to slow... and drive around the beast as it stupidly stared after the car before me still, despite me beeping my horn at it. Geez, soeone ought to teach the cows some road sense!

I'm now in Warrnambool, probably just racked up a rather large bill at this net cafe, and shall now head off, Ishould be driving the Great Ocean Road right on sunset :)

Before After

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