Shire of Wellington

Not much on for today, it's roughly 4 hours from Mansfield to Coongulla. We had a quick stop at Merchant coffee roasters for an iced latte and some toasties for the road. It wasn't long before the tarmac turned to dirt around Jamieson, and we realised why the 140kms was going to take so long. Lots of corrugations and tight bends. We stopped a few times to give the boy and drink since the road was so bumpy, the passenger princess he is was getting the shits when we tried to do the usual and give him water while driving. We had a short stop at Licola to stretch our legs and go to the bathroom. There was a general store, caravan park and a lovely rest area that looked quite new. Another hour on the road and we made it to Coongulla, set on Lake Glenmaggie. We originally had plans to stay near Walhalla at one of the many free camps, before we realised it's a long weekend and couldn't get into the caravan parks either. We got lucky with a cancellation at an airbnb, so we locked it in. Very good timing considering the temperature for the next 2 days is meant to be 38-40 degrees and this place has aircon. Unfortunately with the weather, we got a call from the Walhalla Rail who said that due to the temperatures there is a total fire ban for the weekend, so the train that we had booked is unable to run. Coongulla is about 90 minutes from Walhalla, the plan was to head in Saturday morning, do our train ride, grab lunch then we had a mine tour booked, all dog friendly too! When we got the call about the train, we ummed and ahhed about whether it was worth driving 90 mins to do just the mine tour for an hour, then another 90 minutes back. The mine tour people were also happy to refund, so change of plans this weekend. We brought what we needed into the airbnb and relaxed for a bit before deciding on heading to Heyfield, about 15 minutes away, to grab Chinese for dinner. We got plenty for leftovers since we don't plan on doing much tomorrow. The house does have an arcade machine, poker table, pool table and lots of board games, so that'll probably be our plan with the heat.Read more