I set this trip (what had been a 6 day trip, but cut down to 5) for mid-May, and travelling beginning on Sunday so as to avoid any busy roads / tourists.
This first day I had set to leave at about 9:00 am with the driving time calculated at 7 hours 27 minutes.
The destination was Kingston SE.
The SE is for South East.
Notably there is no longer any ‘Kingston’. Anywhere in South Australia, not anymore.
There is Kingston On Murray.
Kingston SE used to be called Kingston, but the SE was added to differentiate it from Kingston On Murray, which was also known by ‘Kingston’ but has now been officially named Kingston On Murray (also written as Kingston-On-Murray).
Leaving from the south eastern suburbs, through Melbourne it was a fairly simple journey, over the Westgate Bridge and along the Western Freeway heading for Ballarat.
One thing I’ve not realised despite going there at least twice when I was a kid was how far Ballarat is from Melbourne. It never seemed like a long way as a kid, but it is a fair lick away from the city.
Basically there wasn’t much different about this trip that others might make on their journey to Adelaide by road.
There’s also not much to note, except after the road passes Ballarat that’s where the road has been duplicated up to. It is in progress, so at some point it should be duplicated all the way along to presumedly Ararat.
The change however from others driving to Adelaide is that at Horsham I turned at first set of traffic lights in Horsham heading west towards the coast along the Wimmera Highway.
All the trees along the Wimmera Highway, and indeed throughout Victoria at that time, though noticeably along this highway were beginning to drop their leaves. It gives everything a somewhat dream-like quality to things.
Except it was sunny and I had sunglasses on. So everything took on a bright, yet washed out sort of appearance. Everything had a de-saturated look.
The trees with their leaves half dropped didn’t look as dream-like as they might have done in the autumnal light. Instead they looked dead, almost sinister. It was a post-apocalyptic sort of sense that I drove along these roads, past abandoned buildings and towns with some shops closed, for lease signs in their windows. It made for an odd landscape to be viewed upon out the window.
In places it was like the destruction had come and gone, road houses and road-side petrol stations, general stores and the like closed long ago, though the light, the autumn’s sunbeams lighting it up with a dull saturation.
The road quality was something I had some issues with.
From Horsham to Lucidale it wasn’t just rough. Rough you can more or less cope with by driving around the rough bits in the road, you get to learn where the potholes or where they’ve been repaired. Also rough roads aren’t all of the time everywhere.
The road, the Wimmera Highway was both rough and uneven. It made for a trying several hours at the wheel.
Lucidale is interesting, sort of because of the route I was taking. Naracoorte incidentally is the larger town on the route going west away from Horsham.
Lucidale is the town I passed through to get from where I was on the Wimmera Highway to the Princes Highway which would lead me to Kingston SE.
Google Maps had other ideas, wanting to send me along Crower Road rather than Lucidale-Mount Burr Road and also the road the road signs indicated I needed to turn right along to get to Kingston SE.
Crower Road appears (on Google Maps / Street View) to be a sealed though in places very country road. It’s probably marginally shorter to go along Crower Road than to go through Lucidale. However Crower Road is twisty going along and around farm and bushland.
So after some more rough roads, joining the Princes Highway I made it to Kingston SE, and promptly missed the turning at the roundabout in town, because I forgot to look at my written instructions I’d written out for myself. “Go through town centre and turn RIGHT at roundabout.”
Because I’d forgotten that the town had two main streets, one that ran from the coast and along and then another that led into the town from the highway.
Two different eras I would guess of main street, the original main street with the pub on it and connected more closely with the coast and then a somewhere more modern main street that’s closer to the highway.
My accommodation was the Royal Mail Hotel, Kingston SE. $40 for a night.
A continental breakfast was included in that price. The only hotel on my trip that offered such a thing, though I’ve stayed at a few other pubs that have offered this. It’s a nice addition. Not something that’ll sway me when booking accommodation, whether I get breakfast or not. But it’s a nice perk.
The Royal Mail Hotel, Kingston SE has lots of parking, which it shares with the local Foodland which is next door to it.
The room was alright. A double bed with a single bed positioned over it in a bunk bed-esque sort of arrangement.
No basin, but there was a TV and a DVD player. The latter was something of an odd addition as the TV was an old (small) CRT TV. Though with a set top box for digital TV.
The bathroom facilities were down the corridor and then up a short flight of stairs. Like most pub hotels I’ve stayed in the location of the bathroom facilities can be in an odd location, though this one seemed like it’d been added in the 1960s or 70s.
Two toilets and two showers.
Downstairs it was a fairly normal pub layout, L-shaped bar with dining and bar areas next to one another. When I went down to eat at 6pm (because I was hungry and tired and wanted to get to sleep early).
One interesting thing to note about the meals that were served there was the presence of a buffet of vegetables.
So you ordered your meal and then you just got your vegetables from the buffet. Roast potatoes and pumpkin, broccoli and cauliflower in cheese sauce, peas, all the general hot vegetables and then also beside it cold salad, beetroot and other salads. Plus fruit and also hot bread rolls. I’ve not seen this sort of thing in a long time. The pubs around where I live and used to be taken as a kid used to do this, but I’d thought this sort of thing had long been abandoned.
The only other thing to note about the pub eating experience was ordering a cider (pear cider specifically) I was just given the bottle. No glass. I do rather like to have my cider in a glass with some ice, but it’s not something I’m going to get particular about.
Retiring to my room, up the steep stairs (though all pubs with accommodation seem to have steep stairs) and past the door that just seems to loom over the stairs evidence I think of a realignment of the staircase or the rooms at some point I headed for the shower. I like to have a shower at night, rather than the morning. I want to wash off the day’s adventures and go to bed clean than sleep in the dirt and sweat of the day’s adventures.
The shower worked, the water was hot, though slightly disconcerting was that the drain drained the water rather slowly.
My room was well insulated from the excitations in the pub below and after some time on Twitter and YouTube I dropped off to sleep.