Lakes Entrance (for Jan. 31)

We had in room Internet, so we bought an hour and caught up on email and other business in the morning, getting out of the hotel at 10. We returned to the National Museum, saw a couple of other sites, had lunch, and hit the road around 2:30, checking in to our new hotel at 8. The local literature bragged that “The scallops from Lakes Entrance are reputedly Australia’s best,” so we had a quick snack before bedtime.

The museum was quite good, but again I noted the similarity to Ottawa, where the emphasis is on fancy, expensive architecture and lots of empty space. One of the other sites we took in was a fountain in honour of Captain James Cook, who did much of the early exploration in these parts, as he did on Canada’s west coast. The fountain shoots a couple of hundred feet into the air, but is so expensive to run that it only operates for three 2 hour periods every day. On shore, there is a monument of the globe with Cook’s voyages traced out on its surface.

Leaving Canberra we continued in the dry hills with a few trees between two ranges of treed hills. The land became drier with fewer trees as we drove south until it looked like the Swift Current/ Maple Creek area, but with longer grasses. As we neared the coast, it became greener again until we entered rainforest as we descended from the high plateau we had been on. The rainforest persisted as we drove west near the coast. On the high plain, the main agriculture was grazing sheep and cattle. Along the coast, there were patches of agriculture that included grazing and crops.

The divided highway ran out soon after we left Canberra. It became much like the better NZ roads or Saskatchewan secondary roads, except the surface was good. And they were fairly straight allowing speeds of around 100kmph except for a winding section as we descended from the plain into the rainforest.

This town looks quite picturesque. I am looking forward to exploring tomorrow.