Happy New Year!
Maybe.
Anyway, it’s our first trip for 2022. A road trip to Adelaide and South Australia. Assuming that the reason I’m feeling a bit rotten right now is just because of a long day’s driving and not covid.
We are at Hay, roughly the halfway point between Sydney and Adelaide. You could tell it was Hay because there was hay in the back of the ute at the motel, along with a pig eating more of it around the back.
The first half of the drive was the familiar journey down the Hume Highway, under cloudy, showery skies. We stopped for lunch at the Dog on the Tuckerbox, north of Gundagai. KFC for the others, a Chiko roll for me.
South of Gundagai was the departure from the usual drive, the turnoff to Wagga Wagga. We stopped in the summer heat outside of Wagga, at the Air Force base, where a Canberra bomber, F-111, Meteor, Mirage and other retired aircraft were on static display. The museum itself was closed.
The onwards without stopping, following the path of the Murrumbidgee River. Past sheep farms and nut farms, fields of grains and maybe rice. It was hard to tell. Wetlands and flood plains.
I recall once finding the countryside boring, but now I revelled in the golden flat expanse of emptiness beneath the silver-grey skies.
We spotted emus, which are common in the area.
We reached Hay before 5pm and, after checking into our motel, took a drive up the main street, across the Murrumbidgee, and past shops closed for the day. The railway to Hay closed long ago, but the station is beautifully preserved and features a small museum about the European and Japanese interned outside of the town during the Second World War.
Dinner was at the South Hay Pub, the servings so large that neither B nor Alex could finish their steak and veal parma (my burger was a more tractable size). The annoying flies no doubt ate the rest.
At least it’s a dry heat out here.