Adventures in RL - day one

Well, we left Melbourne at 1pm armed with a bag of snack-foods, a couple bottles of soda, some clothing and no particular plan.

Getting to the border of New South Wales went smoothly. At Yass (a town that had to be larger than it looked, considering we couldn't really see any of it) we decided to divert down to the ACT – our nation's capital – which neither of us had been to before. No biggie, right? Swan into Canberra about 8:30pm, rustle up a motel room.

Not so easily. 2 hours of driving and walking up and down Canberra's streets finally yielded a hotel with no 'NO' in front of their 'Vacancy'. Success!

Or not. A quick enquiry and...some daft bugger had stolen the 'NO' from their sign. At this point, I was about ready to get a couple pillows and blankets from the car, and start offering money for space on the couch in a reception office.

Bladders and the hunt for a bathroom won out, and we managed to locate somewhere to take care of that – Even fully booked out, Canberra was awfully quiet. Night life apparently consisted of one Club X and five teenagers on teeny tiny bikes. Either those were what passes for entertainment, or parliament house really pulls in the punters.

Goodbye, nation's capital. Next stop, the town of 'Collector', whose signage promised...beds! Collector, at 10:30pm is... Well, after pub-closing time, there wasn't a light on in the whole town. Driving really slowly through it on the relatively poor and unlit road took... around 8 seconds or so. Goodbye, Collector. Oddly cool name, but nothing for us.

Next stop Goldburn.

No vacancy, no vacancy, no vacancy, no vacancy.

Finally a win (slightly after 11pm). The last motel before we're on the road to Sydney has one or more vacancies. How many? I don't know, didn't care, and didn't ask. The Goldburn Heritage Lodge had one for us and that was what we needed. The young man on the night shift made us welcome, gave us a key, some milk, and let us get to our suite, without any pesky paperwork.

Coffee! A spa! A bed!

Not actually heaven, but you can see it from there.