Today we packed the car and hit the road. This is the beginning of an 11-night Xmas holiday which starts “in transit” with a one night stop in Albury, NSW. Albury is an excellent location for us to stop for the night; it is pretty much right between Canberra and our destination, Ballarat in Victoria. Location wise, Albury is a city on the state border complimented (to the south) by a Victorian counterpart of sorts of the smaller town of Wodonga. 
Boys excited to get under way
We departed at midday, with a short stop in Hawker to get the boys lunch on the run and to do some general car maintenance (fuel, air in the tyres). We took the northern route out past Hall and through Murrumbateman. These days, there’s a bypass of Yass, so it was direct to the highway for us. We had few stops and made good time, motoring past the bush landmarks such as Gundagi, Wagga Wagga and Holbrook. We were at the outskirts of Albury by 4pm, and checked into our overnighter by 4:15pm.
Open road/resort pool
The place we’re staying in has a pool, so we decided that the best way to shake the 4 hour car ride fatigue was with a family dip in the pool. This was the perfect elixir, and after about an hour or so we were refreshed and showered. Reception tipped us to a local bistro (kid friendly) for dinner, so we made our way to the Kinross Woolshed in Thurgoona. Here I tackled a 500gm steak cooked to medium rare perfection and the rest of the family had excellent meals to suit.
View from our cabin / 500gm steak
The boys enjoyed playing on the modern play equipment outside before and after dinner. We started to head back to Hume Dam around 8pm, but detoured away from our accommodation for a post-dinner walk across the aforementioned Hume Dam. The sight was quite impressive, as is the age of the dam. The sun was setting and hitting the area at just the right angle to get an appreciation of the countryside around us.
Crossing the Hume Dam
We didn’t quite cross to the other side, turning around and heading back to the car as light started to fade out. A quick drive to the cabin and the usual night time routine for the munchkins – Jake is still fighting sleep at 9pm as I write this. Both boys are thrilled at the prospect of being on holiday, I just hope they aren’t too excited to sleep, as we have another 4 hours of driving tomorrow as well as the prospect of having to kill six hours as check out time here is 10am, but check in at Ballarat is not before 4pm.
As tomorrow is a Monday, I suspect we will find time to have a brief look through Albury’s town centre and then cross the border and head deep in to country Victoria. The current plan is to perhaps route through Bendigo as there’s a second hand record store I’d like to check out. Stay tuned for more.