Orbost was a convenient place to stay, knowing that I would want to be within driving in one day's distance to Canberra, and not wanting to drive the Monaro Highway late in the day given its twisty layout I elected to stay in Victoria before transversing New South Wales and the ACT to get to Canberra.
That left two options to stay the night; Orbost and Cann River.
The Orbost Boutique Motel seemed a good option, new updated rooms, with no dark brick in sight (something of a consistent theme in country motels is the dark / brown brick construction).
I'd received a text message earlier in the day informing me that in order to maintain social distancing and COVID safe practices there'd be no need to go to reception; here was my room number and the room would be unlocked with my key in the room, and to remember to check in with the QR code when I went in.
I arrived to the motel, found my room, parked and entered. It was as the photos online showed with one or two interesting elements.
The tiles in the bathroom were a lot darker than appeared online.
Also the fridge was loud.
A big fridge is great…for some people. People who travel with food, who want to store a lot…or something, I don't know.
I am more practical with regard to a motel, it's a place to stop and sleep for the night before moving on, it's transitory place to visit.
So the primary consideration for me in a motel is to get a good night's sleep; undisturbed.
The fridge did not allow this.
It was loud, whenever the compressor kicked in there was a very loud noise.
Later that night as I tried to get to sleep (and as it kept turning on) I got out of bed and unplugged it, figuring there were only drinks and the tea pot of provided milk in there, nothing that could go bad, and the fridge being off without power for 8 hours would be akin to there being a black out or something.
I know that having a full sized fridge is meant to mark it out as being more luxurious or something, but it's not helpful to me and my stay - getting a good night's sleep.
I had intended to go eat early and get an early and decent night's sleep. The pub in town had a menu online, it promised some interesting specials from their American chef, plus the pub staples of chicken parma, steak etc.
I wandered in through the door, checked in with the QR code and then looked around.
There was a barman, one older guy in high vis sitting at the bar drinking and someone in the back room playing pool (I think).
Asking "do you do meals", the bar man said "not tonight".
Great.
Going back outside to my ute I recalled when I met the owner of the motel as I was leaving he said that the pub in Marlo had a deal with the motel wherein you got a free drink if you showed your key to them.
I considered going, but it was a 15 minute drive in pitch dark, so that was a 30 minute additional drive I didn't want to do.
Driving up and down the the main street or Orbost I took in my options. Google said there was a chicken shop somewhere, not that I could see it in the dark. There seemed to be very few businesses open.
There were two supermarkets, and I almost went in to the larger one; a Foodworks and bought something microwaveable, the motel room having a microwave.
In the end I went to the fish and chip / burger place, which said cafe from the outside, so I wasn't sure what I was walking into when I went in, there wasn't a QR check in code that I could see as I walked in, and it had those plastic slats / door cover thing like milk bars have. Not the best thing to deal with in the current low-contact situation we now live in, I tried not to think about it too much.
I got the burger meal with chips and a drink and took it back to the motel to eat, not feeling like sitting there, nor sitting in my ute and eating. As it was less than a 3 minute drive back there it was still piping hot. I did make one mistake, I got a burger with the lot and didn't realise the lot included pineapple, had to dig that out of the burger, served me right for just skimming the menu. Was mostly just wanting to get it ordered and done, hadn't really been expecting the pub not to be doing meals.
The motel itself was fine, the interior design decision to use corrugated iron for the ceiling and walls made for a different, although not overly harsh industrial style. One of the major flaws with using this material was around the support of the bed. When you sat on the bed it pushes air out the bottom which makes the corrugated iron rattle, surprising me on several occasions when I sat or got out of bed.