The Echuca Sweat vs. Steam is an annual charity run held on a Sunday in October. Since it takes a good three hours to get to Echuca we left the day before, which also provided a chance to see everything that Echuca has to offer...
It was about 10:05am by the time the car was packed and ready to go - the goal was to make it to Echuca by about 1pm since the race kits could only be collected between 10am and 2pm. By the time I was turning onto the Hume Freeway after Bundoora my skin was already burning up, since this just happened to be the one weekend when the temperature was approaching thirty degrees in an otherwise below average month. I made it as far as Wallan before I had to stop and get some sunscreen out.
With that problem resolved it was off and through the next town of Kilmore and then Heathcote. The drive was alright until this point, as there was a few towns to pass through and a bit of scenery. The rest of the drive to Elmore and finally Echuca was a bit dull, I spent most of my time watching the windscreen get overrun with dead bugs and trying to keep ahead of the 1pm target.
I made it to Echuca after nearly three hours of driving, a couple of minutes ahead of the fictional deadline, then managed to locate the golf course where they were handing out the race kits. After getting back in the car I realised that all I had to find out where the main part of town, and the accommodation across the board in Moama were located, was my mobile phone. It makes you think how much more difficult it would have been to do the same things just five or ten years ago, I guess you just had to carry around a lot of large paper maps - the ones you can never fold back together...
Since it was approaching 2pm and past lunch time (for most people) the first stop in High Street was the famous Beechworth Bakery. They had a massive counter full of cakes and snacks, but not many good vegetarian options otherwise, so I grabbed a spinach and ricotta roll and something that looked like a donut.
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| Bavarian Cream Ring aka The Ring Of Death. |
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| Beechworth Bakery. |
Had a walk around town for a few more minutes after lunch, along the Murray Esplanade, past the Sharp's Magic Movie House And Penny Arcade which has an interesting name but looked a bit old and run down so I didn't stick around.
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| Sharp's Movie House And Penny Arcade. |
The accommodation check-in time was up, so we drove into Moama NEW SOUTH WALES! and found the holiday park. It was just a pretty budget park with individual units, but it is fully equipped with fridge, freezer, oven, kitchen appliances and more stuff you'll never use. Sadly no wifi or cable television :(
I had done all the driving and booked the accommodation but since Jason was first in the door he stole the room with the double bed and I was just left with the other room with four bunk beds - trying to put sheets on a bunk bed is damn annoying, there's just no space to move. The bunks were only just long enough too, I smashed my knee on the wall several times turning over in the night.
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| The holiday park. |
After unpacking it was back to Echuca for the remainder of the afternoon. This is the first time I've been on a holiday (if you could call it that) where I had my own transport. It is dramatically different to being in another country and having nothing but public transport (and taxis, the world's worst form of transport) to rely on.
There was still a couple of steamboat cruises about to depart, I wasn't sure how good it would be but Jason seemed a bit more enthusiastic so we got a couple of tickets on the Paddlesteamer Emmylou. The trip was pretty uneventful, you just go up the river very slowly and then back downstream a bit quicker. Along the way you pass some of the town that you can't see very well above the banks, a bunch of other paddlesteamers along the docks, and then pass underneath the bridge that connects Victoria and New South Wales. It was alright I suppose, but not sure if I'd really recommend it.
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| A paddle steamer and/or steamboat. |
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| I'm on a boat. |
After getting back on land and walking down the main street some more it was about time for dinner - just a pizza for energy for the race the next morning - the pizza place was actually terrific though, really tasty. Back at the holiday park we were stuck with free to air television on a Saturday night which wasn't great, at least Beverly Hills Cop came on eventually...
