After last week's adventure I decided to go for a little bit of a drive to somewhere unassuming.
Port Franklin. It's in Gippsland, it's a fishing village. It has a page on the Visit South Gippsland that provides a little information about it.
There's lots of long sweeping kinda blind curves on the road into Port Franklin.
I selected Port Franklin...just because?...It was a location to aim for on a nice drive. That may be a theme going forward for some of these adventures.
It's got a viewing platform.
It was very quiet when I arrived, there was a fisherman working and a child riding a bike along the street.
The drive to Port Franklin along the South Gippsland Highway was nice, at one place it increases in elevation to a great degree. So much so that I was in the clouds, they were rolling through as I was driving, given the day was forecast in Melbourne as 26ºC driving through this wiped off at least 5ºC.
The cloudy atmosphere continued as I arrived in Port Franklin the overcast weather lending an almost wintery cast to the landscape, despite the lack of cold weather, in fact the humidity was rapidly rising when I was departing Port Franklin.
Port Franklin doesn't have any shops, and the only amenity I noticed were some tennis courts, and a Telstra phone box.
Interestingly as I was driving out of town I noticed one new build house.
Most of the houses are original of different vintages, but this one was a new house, which was interesting in itself, although looking on the map Foster is only a 10 minute drive away. And while Foster isn't exactly a bustling metropolis it looks like it's had some recent new housing go in that used to be paddocks about 10 years ago.
According to the 2021 census there's 174 people in Port Franklin (which is an increase of 40 from the last census in 2016).
There's some towns that the South Gippsland Highway that aren't bypassed on the way to Port Franklin of them Meeniyan has a kinda artsy, quiet weekend getaway sort of vibe to it. As though people have rediscovered it.
The Victorian Livestock Exchange is interesting, not really to see, but just sort of interesting that it's there, and next door to it is a big place selling various John Deere equipment.
Leongatha I ended up driving through the town going in both directions, despite realising that there was a bypass of sorts that didn't take you along the speed hump laden Bair Street in Leongatha. But it's sort of an awkward set of turns to route the roads around the town centre.
There's a nice Art Deco pub in Leongatha, the Bairs Otago Hotel.
The Leongatha Memorial Hall is also notable, given its large Victory statue on the top of the building. According to the Victorian Heritage Database it's an example of Free Classical design in from the inter-war period.
The South Gippsland Highway makes its way through Korumburra as a double lane road in both directions, there were shops along both sides of this road, but it felt a little like it was in a point of transition with older shops being renovated and newer ones open along side some older closed ones.
The realignment of the South Gippsland Highway between Koonwarra and Meeniyan is still ongoing, so for that length the speed limit is 40 km/h. The road surface is nice and smooth which is nice, and at 40 you get plenty of time to enjoy it.