Day 11 - Lilydale to Wangaratta

This morning we were treated to a full cooked breakfast by our hosts! Talk about spoiled. We headed off from Lilydale mid morning and drove the most picturesque road up through the Yarra Ranges - the tallest of tall and straight eucalyptus trees - with huge tree fern undergrowth. It was just gorgeous. Just prior to heading up into the hills we had passed a number of wineries - and made a stop at Domaine Chandon - only to discover we were half an hour too early for their opening time. Oh well - next time.

Originally our plan for today had included a visit to the Healesville Sanctuary - however the weather was turning wet and chilly, so we decided to push on through and leave it for another day.

Onwards up the ranges and we drove into Marysville late morning. Marysville was devastated by the Black Saturday bush fires just over five years ago. Despite a large amount of rebuilding having been completed, it was still painfully obvious that Marysville was only a portion of what it had previously been. Much of the landscape was still scarred with many of the local mature eucalypts having been killed by the fires, but the shrubby undergrowth of new eucalypts springing from seeds thrown by the now dead trees was very symbolic. There are still a many vacant blocks of land, with some evidence of remnant footings, or a lone mailbox or a driveway to nothing that serve as daily reminders to the locals of the loss this community has seen.

Marysville has so much natural beauty around it. A few kms out of town we did a small hike to Steavenson Falls. The lady at the visitors centre told us how the town is an important hub for the Victorian high country in the wintertime, with several ski hire places in town.

Today was the first day back to school for Victorian school kids, and the school - which was devastated by the fires - was possibly one of the first buildings rebuilt - beings such an important hub for the community.

We lunched in Marysville after our hike, enjoying a "local platter" which included a range of lamb, smoked trout, olives and ham all sourced locally.

Heading out of Marysville we continued to enjoy the most wonderful yellow, oranges and deep reds of autumn leaves on our way to Euroa. At Euroa we did a quick lap of the town and found the site of the former national bank, which was the site of one of Ned Kelly's famed holdups back in the late 1800s.

It was around this time that we realised that we had sort of gained a day in our travels - so called ahead to our Canberra lodgings - where we are due to arrive on Thurs night - to see if we could arrive Wed instead. Fortunately they have availability, so we continued on, and ended in Wangaratta for the night, after doing a quick detour into Glenrowan for some more Ned Kelly historic sites. We had stopped at Glenrowan on our way down, but it had been a quick lunch stop as we knew we were coming back through.

In Wangaratta we enjoyed an Indian meal next door to the motel. Ms10 has become more adventurous in her tastes, but we again failed to satisfy Mr8 and ms4 with our choice.

After dinner Mr8 started complaining of ear pain. Given he has a "history" I was travelling with a "just in case" prescription for him. Unfortunately he chose to tell me about 30mins after the last pharmacy closed. Given we were in a not-too-big but not-too-small regional city, I decided to chance it and took him to the local emergency department. I knew he drill with his ears, so have the triage nurse the run down and pretty much said - look if the wait won't be long, I'll get someone to look at his ears to just check then, otherwise I'll just manage him with panadol until I can fill the script tomorrow. When we were told the wait wouldn't be long, we hung around - but Murphys Law saw a few more urgent kids come in after us - and two hours later we got to see a doc. The doc was very apologetic for the wait. I didn't tell her about the time I waited eight hours with ms10 when she was really crook one night at John Hunter Hospital. Anyway - while mr8 has another bulging ear drum - fortunately it doesn't seem infected, so back to Plan A of treating him with an panadol it seems.

Tomorrow we'll be in Canberra. Ms10 can hardly contain her excitement at all of the museums and things that are on her list to go and see!