Friday, 26 April 2013

Seymour - Melbourne

Total mileage: 112 KMS Left Seymour around 9.40am. We drove to the Puckapunal Army Base, thinking we could walk right in and look through the museum which is there, BUT, we were confronted by armed guards at the entrance which is a couple of hundred meters from the actual base. And guess what!!!! they would not let us in. We turned around and headed towards Melbourne. We travelled down the Hume Highway until the turn off to Kinglake and Wittlesea which were devastated by the fires in February 2009. Kinglake is a town in Victoria, 46 km north-east from Melbourne's Central Business District. Its Local Government Area are the Shires of Murrindindi and Nillumbik, and a population of 1,347. The town was one of the worst affected areas during the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009. The Black Saturday bushfires were a series of bushfires that ignited or were burning across the Australian state of Victoria on and around Saturday, 7 February 2009. The fires occurred during extreme bushfire-weather conditions and resulted in Australia's highest ever loss of life from a bushfire; 173 people died and 414 were injured as a result of the fires. As many as 400 individual fires were recorded on 7 February. Following the events of 7 February 2009 and its aftermath, that day has become widely referred to as Black Saturday. The following video will show you how close to devastation Kinglake became. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=JTA3hwyEXnI After purchasing some home made jam and pickles & lunch at the local cafe we continued on our trip. It was an uneventful trip which did not take long on our way into the big metropolis of Melbourne with the help of "Sally" our new GPS and she did not lead us astray even to the storage sheds where we left the caravan until we sail on Wednesday. One of the photos shows you that there is a slab of concrete which is where the Kinglake Service Station which sells petrol, we found out that it caught on fire and actually exploded with all the petrol catching fire. We were also told the shops across the street caught on fire in the roof, but they were saved.

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