Day 44 (March 15) - Darnum to Boolarra via Warragul

We slept reasonably well last night, although being close to the highway meant there was some disturbance from traffic. Also, a hotel carpark on a Saturday night perhaps wasn't the best environment; all in all it wasn't bad at all, but there was a bit of noise from some patrons who farewelled each other at length not far from us at about 1am.

This Granola was delicious!

We devoured a box of this Dorset Cereals Granola we'd bought from NQR last night. We'd gotten one of these at the NQR in Ballarat and it was a winner so we got some more last night. It's odd that delicious (if not entirely healthy!) breakfasts like this evidently don't sell - Woolworths used to carry this and no longer do so presumably they sold the stock to NQR who are clearing it out. At the time of writing, Coles are selling another flavour of the same brand for about $8.30 for a 500g box. I guess at that price it's not likely to be a big seller, I think we paid $2 at NQR!



 
We were heading to Warragul for the meeting today so packed up and headed off about 10am. It's only a 10 minute drive west from Darnum back to Warragul. They have an ecclesial lunch after the meeting so we stopped at Woolies in Warragul to pick up some supplies and went to the house of Bro Paul McKinlay where this Sunday's meeting was held. They normally only have four members - Bro Paul, his wife Sis Glenda, their daughter sis Jemima and another older sister. But today Bro David Morgan came up from Mt Waverley with his wife to deliver the exhortation,  we were there too and another older sister, so their numbers swelled to 12! Bro David delivered a lovely exhortation on Luke 6 (the sermon on the plain), looking in particular at our attitude to others in not judging one another, and ensuring we are building on a rock by actually LIVING the words of Christ, not just talking about them.

Me, Mim, Jemima, Bro David and his wife, Matt, Bek, Sis ?? (93 yrs old),
Judah, Helen, Paul, Sis ???

After the meeting we had a lovely lunch together. Bro Paul gave us some tips on where to go on our journey east. We also discussed an 85 year old contact he had been spending profitable time taking through the elements of the gospel. I spoke for a while to one of the older sisters (who was 93!) and remembered several from Adelaide including Sis Esther Gurd, the Cresswells and Bro Barry Williams and asked of their welfare.

Warragul was putting on a public lecture that afternoon so we had to all move off fairly promptly. Unfortunately we misheard the town name so ended up going to the wrong town for the lecture! The lecture was in Drouin, and we went back to Darnum! :(

I remember Bro Paul from ordering tapes at Glenlock for several years when I was involved with that, and remember him at the time being from the Warragul ecclesia. Of course at the time I knew nothing at all of the nature of the ecclesia and probably assumed it to be an average sized ecclesia in its own average sized hall. It is a real exhortation that some 20 years later, this little lightstand is still going strong, still witnessing to God's truth in the towns around them, and still involved in personal preaching. Let us never think there are too few of us to make a difference or to be of use to the Master. May the words spoken to the ecclesia at Philadelphia be delivered to the little Warragul ecclesia at the time of Christ's return:

I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Rev 3v8

 After we realised our mistake and that our attempts to attend the non-existent Darnum afternoon lecture were to be in vain, we got changed and stopped briefly in Darnum, and then headed towards the town of Trafalgar. This was our junction point for turning south towards our stop for the night. On the way in we saw signs for the 'Holden Museum', so figured this had to be worth a look. We spent about 45 minutes in there looking at some of their old Holdens. They had quite a range from the 48-215 (FX) up to the end of the Kingswood range (1977), and some later models (VN (1988) onwards). There was a bit of a gap around the early Commodores which was a shame.

Inside the Holden Museum, Trafalgar

 If you've got any interests in old Holdens in particular, this is definitely worth a look. There were some oddball vehicles too - a Holden hearse, a Holden Barina with two front halves welded together so it could be driven in either direction; and several static displays of various vehicle sections (I now have a basic understanding of electric power steering in the VF Commodore).

Ever seen a convertible VL Commodore? Me neither!

But for me the highlight was this VL Commodore convertible, which was a definite new one for me! I had never even heard such a vehicle had been made. much less seen photos of it! I did a quick Google and found this Flickr photo of it, but the poster there seemed to know nothing of its history.

This vehicle wasn't part of the main display, but the proprieter (aptly named 'Greg') took us out the back to show us. It was never a production car or, sadly, even an official factory prototype. This was just a vehicle some apprentices had put together for a bit of fun. The odometer only had 25km on the clock, and oddly enough used a VB-VK indicator stalk rather than a VL one. I guess they were just using bits they could lay their hands on.

We moved on from Trafalgar, got some fuel and got to our camp near Boolarra, which is about 40km south-east of Warragul. Mim knocked up some crumbed fish we'd gotten from NQR and some vegies, and we got the kids into bed about 8:45pm. They'd been a bit scrappy this evening and we'd had to ban them from talking temporarily a couple of times, so we talked through that and our expectations of their behaviour tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow... Coronavirus hasn't really affected our travel plans too much just yet, but we are aware of the disruption it could cause if state borders close. We don't really want to be stuck in Victoria for the next six months, lovely as it has been, as it would be perishingly cold in winter and we really have mainly packed for warmer weather! So for now we're still heading east, but we do have half an eye on developments in case we need to zip north quickly and get into Queensland. If we have to be marooned somewhere we'd rather it be north of the Qld border. It's a nice place to be stuck, but we have a lot of exploring to do above Rockhampton anyway.

-- Greg