Day 32 Thursday 4395km

Crawled out of my warm sack and hit the main street for a coffee and a couple of donuts, not fresh baked but pretty good anyway. I hit the road towards Wodonga as Miles at the pub said they might be in strawberries right now. I found the place soon enough and there were no plants up. I continued down the unsealed roads and passed a few orchards, but the gates were either locked or no one was around. I eventually came upon a house with heaps of different kinds of fruit trees and whipped jumpin’ joan in. An older man came out of his shed where he was working wood and said G’day. We chatted for a bit, and he said that I could paint what I like, so I sat down in his front yard and painted his crab-apple tree. It was a bit more formal with the terracotta pots at the base and the driveway behind, but it got me thinking about how fruit trees aren’t natural anyway, but manipulated by man for useful purposes. I finished up and had tea with Ian and his wife Olive and we discussed the local petrol station in Yackandandah. He said the old station was going under, so everyone in the town got together and started a corporation with over one hundred local stockholders. They built a new station with bigger tanks and now they can decide what kind of petrol they buy and get it strait from the dock in tankers. The stockholders get something like a twelve cent/litre discount and the dividends from the stock are split 50/50 between the stockholders and the rest going towards local community development. I thought this was a brilliant idea as it gets locals to shop locally for a very good reason – it’s cheaper and supports the town. I pulled out of Kirby’s Flat and headed back into Yack to fill up at said petrol station, they drove on to Albury. I got a room for the night at the Railway Hotel, had a shower, did my laundry and even washed jumpin’ joan. The love of my life is catching the train in tomorrow and I want to look and smell my very best. After a decent Thai green curry, I went to the cinema and saw ‘Defiance’ which was about a largish contingent of Jews hiding in the BelloRussian forests during WWII.