My first Australia road trip was to the city of Wangaratta.
We drove to a small town, three hours from Melbourne, to the cathedral town of Wangaratta. We saw a few dead kangaroos on the side of the road. They must have been hit while crossing the street. I made a mental note to share this part with Che. It was unpleasant to see, but I guess that’s another authentic Aussie thing to experience. The town was incomparable to any place I had been to before. Maybe this was an aged portrayal of an Australian town decades before it became a metropolis.
The main event of this trip was supposed to be the King Valley winery. Unfortunately, it was closed as the summer holiday season was down under. We almost couldn’t find a place open for lunch and ended up waiting under the sun for a good half hour for a table at Cafe Derailleur. It was worth it, though, as it’s the best-pulled pork burger I have ever tasted.
Also, it didn’t matter much that we couldn’t do planned things because we enjoyed the company.
The next stop was Woolshed Falls. Again, it was another completely new thing for me. I have seen waterfalls before, but greenery has always dominated, like the Madakaripura waterfall in Surabaya. But this was more rocky and barren.
But it was still tempting to jump into it.
On the way back, we stopped at a gallery cum coffee shop called HUB SIXTY TWO. The gallery displayed paintings by various local artists and some traditional crafts.
If I were a local, I’d hang out and blog here, as it’s damn cozy.
Would I come to Wangaratta again? I’m glad we did, but I don’t think so since there are so many nooks and crannies in this country/continent to explore. It had the charm of uncharted territory. To be somewhere, you had no expectations nor any imagination about.
Wangaratta is a town that makes a traveller a traveller. I remember hoping there would be more road trips shortly, that I didn’t weird our couple friends out too much and that they would still want to hang out with me.
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