Hamilton, Victoria, Australia
Earlier this year myself, a ginger fellow and a Swiss girl were driving through Australia in a bright yellow 1984 Mitsubishi Express 'cuz we could. While this wonderful workhorse eventually made an impressive loop of the entire continent it did have a tendancy to spack up at the worst possible time.

One such moment was on the drive up from the end of the Great Ocean Road up towards The Grampians, a long and tedious drive with little of note between the two points. An ominous rattling noise started up in poor little Tweety's gut, we hoped for the best and kept on driving, praying to the Gods of Backpacking that we didn't get stuck in a Wolf Creek situation. A few kilometers later the rattling had become significantly worse so we pull off to find a mechanic in the ass-end-of-nowhere town of Hamilton.

After a mechanic has tutted at the van a few times and told us that the alternator had almost cracked in half cuz of a shoddy job the mechanic back down in Melbourne had done we're told to make ourselves comfy for a few hours in town while he sorts us out (Great bloke, fitted us in in the middle of the day no fuss, didn't even rip us off like we expected!)

So we trot off into Hamilton and crack open the Backpacker's Bible, or the Lonely Planet Australia Guidebook as it's otherwise known, and set about finding out what there is to do here.

I'll paraphrase the book - "There is no reason to stop in Hamilton unless you really like wool"

That's pretty much it. The self-styled 'Wool Capital of the World's big attraction is the Giant Wool Bales and a Wool Museum, which yes, we did visit!

Oh, also, I'm originally from Holyhead... nuff said...
(happynoodleboy, Fri 30 Oct 2009, 23:33, Reply)