Location: ///gone.corrosive.commanded

Last night we stopped at a tiny (but lovely) van park in St Arnaud, a former Gold mining town between Ballarat and Mildura.

This morning we drove a short distance out of town to check out the local silo art.

Pretty cool don’t you think?
It is titled ‘Hope’, and depicts the story of three pioneer residents of St Arnaud. It was painted by a local artist: Kyle Torney.

“During the 1800’s ‘Hope’ was about a miner looking for a fleck of gold in his pan, ‘Hope’ for his wife, will she will be able to buy food and clothing for her family and ‘Hope’ that a young child will prosper.”

Returning to Ripley we noticed one of her tyres looked a little flatter than it should. A quick pressure check showed us it was waaaay down.
Uh Oh.
Luckily there was a local tyre repair shop not 100 metres up the road.

And here’s the thing. The service we received at this small country business was 11/10. The owner Craig was welcoming, enthusiastic and, despite having other work in progress, in no time at all had Ripley’s wheel off and was troubleshooting the problem. In the end, we couldn’t find the exact cause but Craig replaced the valve just in case that was the issue.
All up we were there for about an hour most of which spent was chatting to him and his mechanic (who turns out is married to a nurse) about our travels and their travels and solving the problems of the world.

And to top it off, they would accept no payment for their troubles. This sort of experience restores my faith in humanity. Highly recommended: Bridgestone service centre

The rest of the day was spent rambling through the small historic townships dotted about the countryside. The weather is perfect right now as we slowly range eastwards.

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Tonight we are staying just outside the small township of Newstead. It’s part of the local racecourse and has campsites for $10 a night. It also has a dump station which is just as well because we are chockers.