​Closer to home!

And now for something a little different from me - places closer to home - in between our more epic journeys! There are many beautiful places to visit in Victoria many in easy drive of Melbourne or elsewhere in Victoria - relatively speaking!  They make perfect ‘Weekend’ escapes. Our trip into central Gippsland over the last weekend in 2017 for instance.
First destination, Maffra. After a very scenic and peaceful drive taking the back roads to keep off the highway as much as possible, what a surprising Maffra turned out to be! The town is spacious and quiet, but has a few good cafes and pubs, a golf course and half dozen or so wineries and berry farms within easy driving distance.  If nature is your thing there are a few State and National parks in the area as well as lakes and mountains. If you like to do a bit of 4WD-ing then this is a brilliant launching place with the Alpine National Park and the Avon Wilderness Park a few hours north of Maffra. No prizes for guessing where we headed! Before I tell you about that let me tell you about some options for Maffra.
We stayed at the Maffra Motor Inn www.mafframotorinn.com.au. Delightful and affordable motel accommodation, absolutely adequate for most needs and well situated.  A short walk (or drive) to the centre of town. Ange and Dave, the managers, are very friendly and helpful. Ange grew up in Maffra so knows the area well. They offer package deals for those who are interested – 'Play and Stay' (there’s a golf course nearby) and 'Dine and Stay'. Ange will make you a breakfast to go if you want to get on the road early and will pack you a picnic if you book ahead. The car park is dotted with fragrant garden boxes spilling flowers, herbs and vegetables (we came home with a huge bag of fresh-picked silverbeet – Yum!).
If you like the water, just 20 Km down the road, you can hop on a heritage cruise at Sale. www.saleheritagecruises.com.au .  And don’t forget, the Gippsland Lakes are not much further on.
The whole region is beautifully bucolic and peaceful and you can almost breathe in the precious and rare solitude. We drove passed expanses of young vegetables, fennel, apples and plums growing wild along the road side. You can loopout through the country side and take in a pub lunch at places like Newry.

The Wellington river at Licola

And what did we do? Straight up into the mountains of the Great Divide – a favourite route taking us through Licola, a town privately by the Lions Club. It was a fascinating trip home made all the more so because the navigator took her eyes of the road for just a bit and we got lost. But thanks to HEMA maps we emerged after an 'interesting' stretch of bush bashing through the McGuire track. It was fun but you can be sensible and stick to better roads!

We took some pretty rough road but is was visually stunning.