We left Loch, intending to drive back into Melbourne and head on to the Hume Highway via the Western Ring Road. After about ten minutes in the car, M grew faint of heart, and suggested we take the coast road, which, although our trip would be longer, it would be infinitely more scenic.

As he had been whining off and on about the drive from Melbourne to northern NSW, I thought that it would be best for him to be exposed to as much scenery as possible. (I did also, on two separate occasions with L and my dad as witnesses, tell him to fly while I drove, but he refused - just for the record.)

We turned off at Lang Lang and headed through (in no particular order) Drouin, Moe, Warragul, Sale, Rosedale, Stratford, Bairnsdale and finally, Lakes Entrance. We had decided that we would stay at Lakes Entrance, but found it so unasthetically pleasing, that in desperation, we drove on five further kilometres to Lake Tyers and found an unpowered campsite within earshot of the surf.

Poor little Oomoo had to be left on his own in the boat parking area, looking miniscule alongside the other boats.

We ventured out to the Waterwheel- a pub that must be a fantastic place for a few beers on a sunny day. Our meals were better than we’d hoped - I had thai tuna cakes, and M had excellent calamari. We vowed, afterour ‘first night of holiday’ meal, to go shopping at a supermarket for supplies so we can cook on our camp stove- much cheaper.

Now we are sitting by the light of our four candle lanterns in the back of the van on our bed. M is reading the book I got for his birthday yesterday, Into The Blue by Tony Horwitz, and I am typing into my old Palm IIIx using my foldup keyboard.

I didn’t bring my laptop with me,as I will have no was to charge it, and the IIIx runs off two AAA batteries. The revelation of our trip so far is a little cigarette lighter powered thing that our housemate D gave to M some months ago. It has a usb port on it, and I have filled two (one 128MB and one 256MB) usb sticks with mp3s. You then tune the car radio (that M installed today) to it and you get all your tunes through the speakers!

Considering all the miles we’ve done in our van (Vanee) without any audio except our own singing, we feel like we’ve entered a whole other realm of car travel!

Tomorrow I will drive until lunchtime. My aim is to make it to Tilba Tilba for lunch - the land of wonderful cheeses.