Drive through the Latrobe Valley to Bairnsdale

13th February 2018

Todays plan is to drive to the Gippsland Lakes, spending the night at Bairnsdale and having a game of golf in the afternoon. We were out of Springvale by 8 am and had already decided that we would have breakfast along the way, probably at Warragul. There  are roadworks everywhere in Victoria, so far, seemingly replacing ARMCO safety railing with cable systems. Some of it looks quite illogical, but I am sure great minds have been involved in whatever they are doing.

Anyway, the upshot is that it is taking us a lot longer than expected to get anywhere, and as soon as there is any sign of activity by the roadside (as part of "roadworks"), the speed limit drops to 40 km/hr, for very long stretches of road where not much is happening.

Eventually we get to Warragul and need a late breakfast. We found at nice cafe and had a very satisfying meal.

We searched the backstreets of Warragul to find a nice cafe called EMC

Leaving Warragul, we saw a very smart piece of Police work. They had set up breath (or Drug) testing stations at either side of a round about and were randomly testing people going through the roundabout, either at the entry or exit. Those trying to avoid testing are pretty obvious.

It was a bit nostalgic driving through the Latrobe Valley, as when we were living in Melbourne, we were there at the height of the Power Station Expansion Program in the 70's. Sadly, some of those stations are now closed down, more for political reasons than good sense.

The journey continued on to Bairnsdale, and because of the roadworks, we were late when we arrived at our motel, through whom we had booked our golf package.

Just before 1pm we drove into the motel, hastily grabbed our vouchers for our golf game and unloaded our luggage into our room. Curiously the vouchers we are given for golf are for the Kings Cove Golf course at Metung, not the Bairnsdale course we had requested. We were already running late so continued on. The course at  Metung was a 9 hole course, relatively new and quite a good golf course, located in the middle of a housing development. They didn't have a record of our booking, but we had no problem getting on. There was no motorised cart available (as provided for on the voucher) because there was no record of the booking. Looks like someone has stuffed up. Anyway, we had a good game of golf going around the course twice (off different tees for the back 9. The final result was a draw, so the tournament score remains unchanged.

Our Motel in Bairnsdale

For dinner, we walked to the Grand Terminus Hotel, about 10 minutes away. It was quite a popular venue and the food was very good.

Grand Terminus Hotel