The Tidiest Town

Right under the sign saying "Welcome to Horsham" were the words, "Voted Victoria's Tidiest Town". Well the tidiest town certainly deserved a visit.

Before we leave one country for another, it seems there are heaps of city things to get done. Although we've only been in Australia for two weeks, the list is as long as ever. Once we bid this rental car goodbye, we will be on foot. Widdling down the contents of our packs is numero uno on that list. (Fiji has taught us that heat and heavy packs do not mix well.) Australian Post will get a heafty donation for taking things off our hands.

Number two - a haircut. After three months of growth I looked like a shaggy dog. Nothing against shaggy dogs, but they are suppose to look that way. Jodie at Cooco's Salon came highly recommended by the first person I ran into at K-Mart. "Where's the best place to get a haircut around here?"

List items number three and four - Lonely Planet books, sell one, buy one. The man at the second-hand book store had never seen a Lonely Planet book before. He flipped through our New Zealand copy and assessed it's resale value. "I'll give ya five bucks," he said. "Sold!" Buying the Bali Island guide took more than our earnings but we needed it and perhaps we'll be able to trade it later for the Java Island edition.

The only other things left to do were to investigate getting the last of our Hepatitis booster shots, confirm our tickets on Garuda Air, make a quick run through a grocery store and, not to be missed, a quick stop at the internet store. Well, the internet stop wasn't on the original list, but when we saw the sign outside the Safeway Super Market, how could we resist. It's funny that we seemed to search through all of New Zealand to find one place to get on-line, and here in a small town, without even looking, we were able to get connected. All the Australian entries you see here were added in Horsham.

Finally with our city chores done, we left The Tidiest Town and headed back toward the Grampians National Park to find a nesting spot for the night. We were looking forward to a quiet evening, although I can't imagine Australian has such things with all the laughing Kookaburras, flapping magpies, screeching parrots and hopping wallabies, but even that would seem a nice change after being kept awake for two nights by overly-noisy campers at the National Park.

Not far out of town we found the perfect spot in Wartook in a campervan park that looked like no one ever camped there. We had an entire field to ourselves, and, it seemed, the entire orange line that at 9:00 p.m. pulled itself from the horizon.