We left home at 7:20am, only 20 minutes later than planned. This was much better than the previous weekend when we had left hours later than planned.

We stopped for breakfast in Mittagong. The cafe we had chosen was gone and the whole complex was empty. There were a few other cafes and we chose Brewsters Coffee House as it had the nicest coffee smell. Greg had bananna bread and Larry had pear and raspberry bread.

Refreshed we drove back to the Hume Highway passing a new giant development with a large supermarket. This explained why the other complex was abandoned.

Greg had never been to Jugiong so we decided to have a short break there. It had been bypassed since I had previously driven this route. We stopped at a small park adjacent to the sportsground and headed towards the river. There were birds everywhere.

Next stop was 5 miles from Gundagai at, yes, the dog on the tuckerbox. No one knows whether the story is anout something that actually happened to Bullocky Bill, or whetner it happened five or nine miles from Gundagai. We decided not to stop there for lunch.

We did, however, stop in Tarcutta, halfway down the Hume. We had burgers in a large shop with car bonnets and a model bi-plane in the roof. There was a bookshelf full of old paperbacks along one wall and nik naks and bits of junk all over. The road workers at the table next to ours had milkshakes in old fashioned battered metal containers.

Albury had also been bypassed since Larry was there last. So we drove straight through and into Victoria. There was no place to stop for Greg to take border photos.

We took a quick break in Wangaratta. We wandered back from where we parked to the bridge over the Ovens River. It started raining so we returned to the car and continued on the trek.

Back on the Victorian stretch of the Hume Highway we saw lots of beware of koala signs. These seemed to be places where the road reserve held lots of ghost? gums.

We were out of water, and there was no towns nearby, so we stopped at one of the very few roadhouses on this stretch of the highway. It was on the wrong side, and the signposts were not clear, so we had do do a u-turn to get there, and then another u-turn to get back on the right side of the Hume.

Eventually we arrived at the outskirts of Melbourne. We stopped for petrol and set the GPS to point to Michael and Jo's place. Back on the freeway we passed pink lit bridges and sculptures. We missed some of the GPS turns due to it not being clear or being in the wrong lane, but we eventually got there.

The key they sent us worked, so we knew we were in the right place. The note on the table said welcome to "Rave". We needed Jo to explain that it was short for R. Avenue.

Michael and Jo were at a Marcia and Chaka concert that night and weren't expected home till late. So we went out to find dinner on Chapel St, just a short walk away, over Dandenong Road/Princes Highway and past a pub with three pink elephants on its roof. We settled on Thai Lime and Lemongrass with a very friendly waiter. Tod mun pla followed by duck curry and bbq beef salad. The salad very tender.

Back to Rave, Greg went to bed and Larry waited up until M&J returned.