Roadtripping from Queensland to Victoria
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It's simply been too long since I've done a good interstate road trip - the last one was seeing some friends in Coffs Harbour way back in October last year.
This road trip would be the biggest and most ambitious I've done yet, and was planned over the course of two months in between assignments and study.
Little did I know that this trip had a lot more in it for me than my plans led me to believe, all sorts of great (and bad!) unexpected surprises. I'd see snow for the first time in my life, I'd see towns that I'd heard only from relatives, I'd meet distant people for the first time, and more than anything, be inspired more than ever. I'd be doing this trip alone, as all the friends and relatives I wanted to bring with me unfortunately had commitments.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here, let's lay out the original plan here. I set out for myself to travel out of my home state of Queensland and drive all the way down to the Macedon Ranges in Victoria, all to see whether I could take the cold weather I'd been cautioned about. Here's how I planned to do this:
- Drive down to Brisbane for the night and meet up with an old mate
- Drive across to Mungindi for the night to catch up with my uncle
- Head over to Mount Kosciuszko and experience snow for the first time
- Make my way down to Melbourne and enjoy city life, taking public transit
- Head back up slightly to the Macedon Ranges to meet with my best friend of 7 years
- Rush back to Queensland before studies resumed
Of course, like with most road trips, things didn't exactly go like I had planned; but you'll have to read on to see where I ended up.
Brisbane!
I stopped in at Brisbane as the first major place to meet up with a long-time online friend of mine.
Not many photos were taken, however we started things off by looking at some op shops and a pawnbroker.
We followed up by going to a Kingpin arcade, played various arcade games while we waited for our ten pin bowling game to be ready.
We blew absolute ass at that ten pin bowling game, and the scores show (seen below), but it was a great time regardless.
Beyond that, we went to an escape room themed around a zombie apocalypse, and while we didn't succeed at it, my friend managed to break the game by guessing 1111 on a pin lock, which we believe to be an unchanged 'admin' pin.
Overall, was a wonderful time catching up with an old mate.
Mario Kart scores & silly profile pictures, and our abysmal bowling scores
Suddenly going bush at Mungindi
After enjoying the city life for a couple days, things changed up rapidly by driving 6 hours inland to the border town of Mungindi (the only town in Australia to have the same name on both sides of the border!) to see my uncle.
It was great catching up with him and stay at his place for the night. We talked about a lot of things, and being the generous bloke that he is, he couldn't help but give me some various surplus plastic utensils and classic Styrofoam cups to keep me going on my journey.
As this visit was more of a family thing than going somewhere beautiful and glamorous (there really isn't much at Mungindi), I don't have any photos from Mungindi to share.
The long drive to Orange
At this point in my trip, my main goal was to get to the Macedon Ranges in Victoria, but enjoying the towns that I stopped in at along the way.
Orange was one of those such towns, and after taking 11 hours to get from Mungindi, I decided to stay an additional day there to rest up and enjoy what the town had to offer.
Night-time photos
This is how the town looked as I came in right on dusk - my poor phone just doesn't do that well in scenes like this, but I did my best with what I had to capture the magical vibe that the amber lights radiated above the road.
Summer St in centre of town
Cook Park
The following day, I started the day off having a chat with the tourist information centre, who were absolutely wonderful and gave me a nice plan for exactly what I was after.
The first part of that plan was to check out Cook Park - I loved how it kept with the heritage vibe while also feeling like a homely place in nature. My only complaint (not seen in photos) is that it is surrounded by busy roads, ruining the atmosphere a little bit. Despite that, I still enjoyed walking around and taking it all in, and imagining just how much more lively it would be in the summer time.
Clockwise from top-left: A nice little pond within; a bridge going over said pond; indoor garden that was closed; looking through the garden window; another angle through the window; quaint section of the garden
Borenore Caves
After Cook Park, the next phase of my little tourist plan was to check out Borenore Caves over at Borenore Karst Conservation Reserve (NSW NPWS). It was understandably quite difficult to get some good photos, so I'll describe the vibe as simply extraordinary in how the caves have formed over tens of thousands of years, and it was very easy to imagine early mankind (such as the Aborigines) sheltering in this cave and calling it home. I would have loved to sit in there with a campfire going and just have a night like a caveman, but it's probably a good thing for preservation that it's a protected site not permitting such activities.
Various shots in and around Borenore Caves
Video: Mount Canobolas
The final part of my little daytrip around Orange was to check out the nearby Mount Canobolas and walk one of the trails. While I've done a good few mountain trails before, the thing that I was not prepared for was the extremely chilly weather.
By the time I had walked the 1.2km trail to its end and climbed a rock for a better view, I was extremely tired and exhausted, and my mask keeping my face warm had broken off, so no photos or footage was taken on the way back.
My experience here was mostly captured in 30 second videos intended to be video messages, so I have edited them all together into the below video!
The Federal Way to Canberra!
My next place I passed through was Canberra, and in particular I stopped in at Parliament House. I'm not someone who is heavily invested in governments and politics, but I definitely wanted to see Parliament House in person given that I've seen it my whole life on TV.
I completely loved the building - the architecture, the history, the layout, the grandeur, it was all there and at its best. It made me wish that I understood engineering and architecture much more, so that I could appreciate the sheer amount of talent and effort even more than I already did.
I liked the self-deprecating humour of Pollies Lollies enough to take a photo; it's good to know even the government leaves old chairs outside; the empty House of Representatives chamber
The State in General
In general, Canberra was the best capital city I've ever driven through - traffic was busy, but not chaotic like my experiences in Melbourne and Brisbane have been. It had everything you could want, including a completely vegan restaurant which I thought was pretty cool!
The ACT itself was also extremely pretty - here's some photos taken from both the roof access of Parliament House looking out across Canberra, and the landscapes you drive through as they appear in winter.
Top images looking out at Magna Carta Place and Red Hill respectively; bottom images taken on the Federal Hwy
It's Cooler in Cooma!
I wasn't actually staying in Canberra for the night though, my goal was to get to Cooma, which was the cheapest accommodation within a reasonable driving distance to Mount Kosciusko!
Cooma was an unexpectedly beautiful place with a rich multicultural history, and my only regret was not taking any proper pictures of the place itself. Below are just a couple photos I had taken which don't even come close to expressing the deep history the town has.
But it's threeeeezing in Thredbo!
Okay, I'll be the first to admit that's a pretty forced header. Regardless, I got pretty excited as I drove up Mount Kosciusko and started seeing snow on the side of the road, and more of it kept appearing as I went through.
Thredbo itself was a very beautiful little village, and it always astounds me how humans are able to build entire places on the steepest of grounds. Unfortunately, I took no photos of the village itself, so you'll have to take my word!
Again, my experience in Thredbo was really captured in short videos, which I've once again edited all together into a single video below.
Hitting a border at Albury-Wodonga
The next place I went through was Albury, which is another border town, it's Victorian counterpart being Wodonga.
However, my stay there was prolonged much more than I had planned as my trusty Subaru started having major issues with its power steering system, which took me a couple days to get it back to a drivable state again.
Once the mechanical issues were sorted out however, I checked out the night life in Albury and was quite quickly sketched out at the amount of odd people walking around doing odd things, so these are the only (decent) photos I took during the night.
It's also at this point that I got a new toy from a Wodonga pawnbroker - a Canon PowerShot SX430 IS - a point and shoot dedicated camera. From this point onwards, there will be many more photos taken from this trip as it was my new little obsession.
Huon Hill, Wodonga
I really wanted to go out and start exploring the local area and finding nice mountains, so I went up a pretty sketchy gravel road to the lookout at Huon Hill. You definitely got a nice vantage point overlooking Wodonga and the Murray River.
Clockwise from top left: Looking out over the carpark; facing West from the lookout; facing North from the lookout; a fallen down, dilapidated farmhouse seen along the road to the lookout
Everything else in Albury
I took a few other miscellaneous photos in Albury that didn't belong in any particular category, such as a pretty sick games store and how incredibly foggy it got on one of the days I was staying there.
Historical Beechworth
I decided to pop in to Beechworth during one of the days I was still in Albury-Wodonga, it's a town that has kept to its heritage roots.
Heritage service station with a very neat collection of mad cars
Finally rolling into Romsey!
After 4 days of being in Albury-Wodonga, it was time to finally get to the destination of this whole trip to meet up with my last friend, Ash, and stay with her and her family for a couple days.
The first thing we did was go to High Point, and we decided to put my newfound camera to work at the Pipe Dreams structure across the road from where we parked. Unfortunately for Ash, I was so excited to try the 45x optical zoom on that camera that I forgot to take a reasonable photo of her.
I took some photos of some interesting (and very expensive!) glass figurines.
Beyond this, we ate at a couple places, and Ash was trying to find a new quilt cover on the cheap, showing me through Myer and several other women's fashion stores along the way, before just settling on something from Harris Scarfe.
The Climb to Culgoa
Our next day consisted of us starting to make our way to Culgoa to meet up with a relative of Ash's. Our first major stop was Bendigo, where we looked in an op shop and then perused some pawnbrokers, where Ash found an absolute bargain 6 speaker surround system for $25.
Beyond Bendigo, we stopped at a little town called Bridgewater for a toilet break, where I proceeded to lock the keys in the car.. The key remote had stopped working a few days prior and so I was manually locking the car, and inevitably I made that mistake. 20 minutes of phone calls, 40 minutes of waiting for a guy to arrive, and $200 later, we were back on the road.
We then stopped in at a park in Wycheproof, where Ash reminisced on her childhood memories there, and was sad to see the animal enclosures all gone except one, which was empty and abandoned.
And finally, we made it to Culgoa just on dusk to meet up with her relative. They were absolutely lovely to be with, and were keen to show us around their house, their latest Lego projects and the new gaming setup they built to join us in Minecraft. We all had dinner at the local pub there before saying our goodbyes and arriving back at Romsey just before midnight (for context, I usually am already asleep by 9pm!)
The coastal trek back to Queensland!
As you've probably garnered from reading this post, I've taken a very inland route through New South Wales and Victoria, but I'd be taking a much more coastal route on my return. As I was on time constraints, I regretfully couldn't spend more time at these beautiful places.
Euroa
I stopped in at Euroa as a rest stop, and it was a very pleasant place to do that in. I really wish I had time to check out the historical society in particular.
Several images from around the local town park
Moss Vale
I stayed in Moss Vale for the night, and it also keeps a very heritage vibe throughout the main area (if you ignore all the cars, that is!)
Milton Island
Jumping ahead a bit, I stopped in at Milton Island for another rest stop - seems like it was understandably popular for boating and fishing! I was quite astounded at how green the whole place was despite the fact it's winter.
Laurieton
I stopped in once again to some small places, in particular Kew and Laurieton. Kew has their Big Thing, which is The Big Axe outside the tourist information centre that is itself a log cabin.
I decided to go up to Camden Head over in Laurieton, where I followed the Perpendicular Point walk and I can legitimately say that this was the most beautiful ocean-side landscape I've ever seen.
And if I may break the flow for a slight moment, look at the second image in that gallery again. Click on it to get a better look at it, and you might just make out a house on that coast. Here's my 45x optical lens zooming in on that house.
Stopping in at Coffs Harbour!
The final place I would meet up with another old mate of mine, Adrian! Adrian is probably the most conscientious and considerate person I have ever met, even offering to drive me around because he knew I'd be tired from all the galavanting I'd been doing on this trip.
We started off having a look at how the Coffs Harbour bypass is going, what's changed since I last went through about 1.5 years ago, noting the sheer amount of u-turns required to get around currently, and discussing how it'll affect Coffs once it's completed. [Update 2026: That bypass has been completed!]
From there, we drove up through to Sealy Lookout where it was a lot busier than we were used to, but it was still nice to take it all in and pick out landmarks and suburbs.
Adrian then took us over to the Big Banana where he was excited to show me it now has an escape room and axe throwing as new additions since I'd been there last. We naturally went for the escape room and we went with the only option available, the Harry Potter themed one. Unfortunately, this one was also a loss, but the staff member acknowledged that it was moreso intended for larger groups than a duo.
We decided to eat out at what Adrian reckons is the best place for food in Coffs Harbour, which was Ramen Go. I will definitely say that I had a wonderful bowl of ramen there, so I tend to believe him. I also started to get the hang of using chopsticks while I was dining in there!
And that's the trip!
The rest of the route back to Queensland was fairly uneventful. If you made it this far, a huge thank you for reading my post, I can only hope that you enjoyed it. This was the first blog post I've ever done before, and I've already learned a lot just from writing up this post (perhaps ones this long should be done in multiple parts.)
A special thanks goes out to Ash for proofreading and giving me very valuable feedback on this blog post.
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