In Bendigo Stephen negotiated paying for our parking, finally phoning up to register. That means we can use this type of payment anywhere in Victoria. After he spent ages on his phone we discovered a little stand with a keyboard that would have allowed card payment. Oh well, the joys of arriving in a strange town where you don’t know the systems.

In Bendigo Stephen went to an Elvis exhibition and I had a coffee, then tracked down the Chinese garden. We were in the centre of the town with the information centre, parklands and art galleries.

Our time there meant that we had quite a long afternoon of driving on C roads to our overnight destination. We spent a peaceful night, again in a village recreation centre, with access to toilets and drinking water, much appreciated. We were successful in making a donation at the general store in the morning.

Yesterday was a dream drive in comparison to the last few days. We travelled about 100 kms on the Hume Freeway, then took the B500 Alpine Way to here. We stopped for lunch in Myrtleford on the way. It wasn’t until the last 20 kms that we started to have views of mountains and we stopped at a viewing point for Victoria’s highest mountain, Mt Bogong.

Actually, we can see it from our campsite. There is a little snow on top. When I booked our caravan park online I wasn’t given a choice of a powered site, so chose unpowered. Stephen was able to change to a powered site when we arrived. We are here for four nights so this gives us peace of mind that no matter what the weather we won’t have a power problem. We are still being careful to not run too many high draw appliances at once.

We are very close to a fast running stream, with beautiful views of the mountains. Unfortunately there are power lines in the way of ideal photos, but will do my best. It’s possible to remove them in Lightroom, but I haven’t done it for a while, so would have to learn how again, something that I may do when we get home.

We’ve booked our coach trip to Falls Creek for tomorrow (Saturday morning). It leaves at 9.00 a.m. and the depot is a short walk from here, so making an early start shouldn’t be difficult. We were lazy this morning, but justify it due to needing to rest.

The B500 is a reasonably easy drive so far, just a bit windy in parts with some ups and downs, but it basically follows the valleys. It’s good that we don’t have to drive up in the higher elevations where there is snow and ice. We also have quite good weather for the next few days. This wasn’t planned, just a matter of luck.

When we arrived in our spot we found that some people had set up for a picnic at the fire pit just behind us. They invited us to join, but we were tired and didn’t really feel like it. They said it would only be for one night as they were leaving in the morning. It was a bit noisy, but we didn’t really mind. As they had children, plus it got very cold after dark, so they left by the time we went to bed. We left the heater running overnight. I’m not sure if we quite needed it, but nice to have and a bonus of being on 230v.