The Spirit of Tasmania got to the mainland at six in the morning and regurgitated us out into the dark Melbourne predawn.  We needed to get to the Hume Highway but a combination of our nav still thinking it was in Tassie and low bridge prone Melbourne roads whose names you can’t read because it’s dark; meant that it was another swear bear fest with the kids in the back seat stunned into a well appreciated silence as we stopped in the middle of side streets to look at phone maps and did some crazy last minute lane changes, which is a real feat when you’re over 14 metres in length. We got to the highway. I’ll say no more.

We motored up the Hume with Canberra as our destination. It’s not on the edge (and thus doesn’t follow our motto) and none of us particularly wanted to go there, but we promised Tim that we would get him there so he could meet up with his classmates on their special year six trip. Google says it’s a six and a half hour trip, but when you’re towing you can usually add a good hour driving time to that as well as rest and pee breaks. We decide to do it three parts. A driving triptych a sit were.

Part one took us to Glenrowan. I don‘t need any superlatives to describe it. Perhaps diminutives would be better.  It is small. It has a pub and some overpriced Ned Kelly displays and animatronic re-enactments, that may have been worth the admission, but I doubt it. It has a few signs around the place that tell the story of Ned’s last stand, but they are a little confusing and sad.

Part two saw us pass the track winding back to an old fashioned shack, as we took the road to Gundagai. It has a story about a great flood in 1852 which washed the original town away. It was a very interesting story and the town itself is quite charming and a gave as a good dampening down. We went down to the dog on the tuckerbox servo for some free sight seeing and to read the clouded history of the poem. I don’t think anyone would have heard of Gundagai without the poem but how did it catch on? Beats me, maybe it was Slim. And the five miles is actually 4.9 kms from the edge of town.

The last leg took us to Canberra. The nations capital. Have you heard of it?