Road trips. I’ve had a few. Enough to be wary of the romanticism surrounding them being eroded by the reality that is the sheer size and starkness of Australia. Particularly in high summer when the blue sky is almost too harsh, the golden plains searingly brutal, the never ending bitumen writhing like a red bellied black. Radio stations crackle in and out, much like the throats of the cricket commentators gasping for water.

Road trips here can be weary affairs but ultimately beguiling and entrancing and, after a little while, addictive. The latest pill of addiction kicked in for me on our drive home, somewhere between Albury and Gundagai. There’s not a lot along the road here other than an easy cruise control in mid morning light, hay bales and cows under ribbons of eucalypts, lumpy, rocky outcrops grazing the sky. We’d just stopped beside a giant submarine and had a scalding hot country coffee, and naturally I didn’t want this to come to an end.

It was barely a week ago that we started out in a similar, familiar landscape. Better coffee picked up barely out of the big smoke in Murrumbateman and the second day of the Boxing Day test on the radio. Rounding Yass and pointing towards Melbourne, days that could, or could possibly not, go on forever.

A distinction of this road trip was in it being fully electric powered. And despite a battery percentage of 60% our very first stop was at an Elon data harvesting facility in a rundown car park in the middle of nowhere. I say nowhere, but I mean Coolac, where a parade of mostly Tesla wankers were inching towards their next connection with the almighty. I felt the need to discharge in the portaloo.

What struck me was the opportunity beside these chargers…a rundown pub fenced off and seemingly out of business. Oh to have a coffee or beer or sandwich and buy some discounted MAGA hats signed by Barnaby Joyce while the slower-than-advertised supercharger does it work.

Being post-Christmas excess days, lunch was thankfully already packed. We wouldn’t go hungry. Think meat and cheese and sausage rolls and pickles and crackers and pretzel nut mixes and plump Aussie cherries and eternal shortbread. But this was hardly the most scenic spot in which to eat. So we moved on and dispelled much of our extra charge to reach the far lovelier Tumut and picnic beside the river.

Our route to Melbourne was a little off the beaten track, heading instead through Tumbarumba and Corryong. Not far out of Tumut, the first of the random oh let’s stop for some fruit which may have also been turned into alcohol stops. A sharp u-turn to take us back into the home of the Apple Thief on the outskirts of Batlow. Ciders for off the road.

After cakier refreshments at Tumbarumba (and a genuinely super charge), we paused for a lovely short walk down to the base of Paddys River Falls. As much as road trips are about a car, it is also rather welcome to get out of the car. To be in nature, to smell the dried out warmth, to hear the piercing crescendo of a cicada frenzy eventually drowned out by torrents of water. And, once sated and feeling a little sweaty, enjoy a comfortable seat and fresh cooling as you return to the road.

It was new road for me, skirting the western fall of the Australian Alps. Rounded and snowless, more a cattle-driving, fly-buzzing style of high country than the old ski goggles and an overpriced Orangina. Somewhere there, Mount Kosciuszko, a hillock among hillocks on the horizon.

The countryside here seems particularly vast and sunbaked. A borderlands aching the eyes with perennial glare and jarring contrast. Only the Murray River, and its sinuous offshoots, pacify and give the place life. A whole abundance of it.

Such as a deranged fairy wren tap-tapping at a window at six in the morning. And when there is no answer there, doing the same with my car’s wing mirror. I can only assume the bird hasn’t worked out its reflection and is threatened by that rather handsome chap in blue, leaving a mess all over an EV.

We were staying beside the river for a couple of nights, easing into road tripping life. This gave us a gentle day to relax in an oasis, to admire the serenity and – I foolishly assumed – lounge in front of the cricket. But with one of those things off the table, we ventured out to the nearest town with a coffee, Corryong, and followed this up with a country pub lunch in Tintaldra. Home of the slippiest steak sandwich in – wait – the state of Victoria.

And so, the next day, much of Victoria beckoned. After a pleasing drive along the Murray Valley Highway towards Tallangatta, a further detour took us to another most excellent charging stop in charming Yackandandah. For as the car replenishes quickly and cheaply, the humans treasure Beechworth Bakery cream donuts and good quality coffee under the cooling shade of broad leaves.

This corner of Victoria is really quite delightful, worthy of more than a quick pass through. As we drive through tree-lined roads and undulating pasture, I note the cycling track weaving underneath the shade. Linking up small towns with bakeries and breweries and wineries and cheeseries. Former rail lines reincarnate into gourmet gateways.

We pause at a fruit farm and this is like a blast from the childhood past. Pick-Your-Own strawberries and raspberries, which taste a thousand times better than anything featuring in an Australian supermarket near you. Having initiated Avery in the joy of English strawberries, this is the next best thing.

The fruits of our journey kind of fill the gap of what should have been lunch, and make the trip on the now more conventional Hume Highway of mild interest. Benalla makes for a belated sandwich but little else, and ticking off junctions – Violet Town, Euroa, Seymour, Kilmore, Wallan – the car reaches the sprawling outer fringes north of Melbourne. There are billboards and lifestyle plots and tradie ute parades and roads that simply end in a field and, from several vantage points, a city skyline distant.

Civilisation proclaims itself with a Dominos and Woollies and Maccas and eventually you’ll find a Bunnings. Making hay while the new builds rise. Holding on, lapped at by subdivisions as jets descend towards Tullamarine, a winery stands on a hill. More fruits for the growing collection.

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You plan things on road trips and you don’t plan things. I never imagined during my youthful flights of fancy in the chill gloom of England that one day I would be standing in Colac Bunnings buying an extension cord so my Chinese wife could boil herbal tea. I never imagined this when I woke up this morning, but we are where we are.

The car is happily plugged in and charging, and the battery percentage is heading in the opposite direction to the temperature. Those on day trips from Melbourne bedecked in the shorts befitting thirty degrees are in for a rude awakening. The benefit of carrying everything with you is also the awkwardness of changing pants in the driver’s seat in a car park. There is always an old dear passing by, carrying a bag of vegetables, just at the wrong moment.

If the contrast in climate from Melbourne to Colac is a shock, the change in a few hundred metres in the Otways is next level. We reach our destination which is buffeted by cold gales, shrouded in the cloud. Some sad looking tents with sad looking people flap about next to the car park. The occupants sheepishly smile at us, an expression attempting to project we’re having a wonderful summer holiday with the kids vibes, belied by kill me now eyes.

Other day visitors pause, get out of their cars, get back in, and flee. Some video the wildness for their feeds. We feed in the car and resolve to stick with the plan. To go for a walk to Beauchamp Falls.

The power of trees. Step down into the forest, the beautiful, spiritual forest, and there is almost instant tranquility. The clouds rise and the winds fade, replaced by a still calm now only pierced by patches of birdsong. Fern umbrellas and a crystal brook decorate the trail, gathering pace to cascade in natural splendour. The reinvigorating shower.

Those idiots who parked up, got out of their cars, got back in and fled are idiots. Ha. Though this practice tends to be de rigueur for the Great Ocean Road, often with a quick snap of a rock formation. Cutting across to Lavers Hill and towards Port Campbell eventually we see ocean on this ocean road, and quickly bypass any busy rock formation stops for later in the day. First, a warm drink and some Christmas biscuits.

For peak holiday season, Port Campbell had a bleak, almost abandoned air about it. I suspect people were hunkering down in their caravans, or still off looking at rock formations. A few were hanging around a car park waiting for their Teslas to revitalise for the trip back to Melbourne. Others, like us and the seagulls, were fuelling up on chips.

The landscape around is stark – the aptly named Skeleton Coast – and today it is especially windswept. Under blanket cloud, we walk off some of the chips with a tour of the nearby formations, which are still popular and still populated by the odd freak in shorts and T-shirt. The temperature reads 13 degrees and declares a feels like of 7. I detect some Yorkshire accents among the sightseers – taking advantage of a bonus day of non-cricket – clearly enjoying the summer.

Various lookouts at Loch Ard Gorge prove suitably rugged and mystical, and befitting of a blurry photo or ten. Other than the odd professional with a five metre lens, there are largely two types of photographer bumbling around. Many, like us, are of the hold on to your hats and try to stop your cameraphone from shaking too much brigade. At the other end of the spectrum, I can only say the proliferation of posing and pouting and prancing and performative poppycock on display was of another dimension. It turns out one of my loves in later life is lingering in shot, lurking in the background.

I guess I’m not dissimilar to an Apostle then, one of the twelve or seven or five or whatever it is standing in formation, providing a backdrop to people’s holiday memories. Some Apostles are more photogenic than others however, particular when some welcome and wonderful late in the day lighting emerges. Though tantalising, it’s too cold to wait for sunset. Plans can change. Let the sky redden from the coziness of a warm bed.

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By no means was it summer the next day, but there was a gentle warmth in the shelter of the dunes at Apollo Bay, sipping on a coffee from one of the many options lining the main drag. By Port Campbell standards, this place was a pulsating melee of humanity, outwardly catering to the day trip coach stop morning tea and lunch crowd. A few fairground rides on the foreshore reserve hinted at the fact that it was New Year’s Eve and numerous groups of wee nippers of varying ages engaged in their surf lifesaving holiday drills. The water was relatively benign too, the bay sheltered by a soothing landscape of gentle green hills, bisected by meandering gullies.

On the way to Apollo Bay I spotted a koala dangling from a tree hanging out into the middle of the road. It was not at all suitable to stop, so we resolved to amble along the banks of Kennett River seeking lumps of grey snoozing in the treetops. It is a good workout for the neck, especially as none are to be spotted.

It seems the koalas are on holiday, and you can sense from the faces of the people returning along the track that they too had no success. This, of course, makes me regret not slamming on the brakes and performing a dangerous U-turn and parking on an unstable grass verge earlier in the day.

It’s a lovely drive onto Lorne, hugging the coastline with numerous headlands and bays. And while it is far from a sporty festival of testosterone, the EV is a pleasure to drive. No continuous crunching up and down gears, instant acceleration out of the corners and onto the next, freewheeling and charging down to one inlet after another.

The car deserves a recharge in Lorne, as do we, with what seems to be the last of the Christmas picnic leftovers. We don’t do much else, for Lorne seems even more chaotic than Apollo Bay, a sure sign of an impending big city.

But we bypass Geelong and soon enough reach the sprawl of Melbourne. Where it seems almost everyone is at Lorne. Scouring the streets near where we are staying in Preston, we settle for dinner at one of the few places open which turns out to be a very fine and popular Vietnamese.

It is a relief to eat something that isn’t based around the anglicised nutrition of Christmas. A good way to set course for 2026. Now for the fireworks. Or the top of one or two fireworks if you look closely enough at the distant city skyline from a hill in Coburg. At the end of the display, some of the kids were still asking their parents whether it had started yet. Sorry Melbourne, but Sydney wins this one by a landslide.

The rest of the stay in Melbourne was a rather languid and, to be honest, relatively unexciting time. I avoided the city centre and we ended back at the Vietnamese on New Year’s Day, having scoured a few other nearby suburbs for anything different that might be open. We did find a coffee spot earlier in the day which was both grungy, pretentious and what any middle aged white person on Sky News would shrilly denounce as woke. And to be fair, it was a bit ridiculous that you could only get one cup size. On New Year’s Day when you might, feasibly, require a little extra boost.

But they were open so fair play to them and by the second day of the year things were a little more bustling. It was good to finally see Preston markets in all its technicolour effervescence and summer felt like it was back in swing as temperatures once again nudged over the 30s. My wife took to the air-conditioning with a friend in the largest shopping mall in the southern hemisphere, leaving me alone to tackle the first day of being back at remote work. The shopping mall was clearly larger than I expected for the afternoon progressed into a solitary, non-Vietnamese dinner, followed by a cheeky jaunt to Fitzroy for some gelato and a car top up. I was 99% looking forward to hitting the road again.

Our trip back was a less ambling affair, taking in much of the soporific Hume Highway to quickly reduce the kilometres remaining. Before we got too bored though, we pulled in to see the relloes in Beveridge and later stopped at Euroa for some lovely lunch. It was a blessing in disguise that the motorway service centre was chokka and the EV chargers were impossible to find, for we went back to the small town centre instead and enjoyed a much more pleasant experience in a local café, supporting the locals instead of McColonel Hamburglar. Euroa had a nice feel about it, and I can imagine having a very relaxed stay in the local caravan park. At least for a few days.

Towns like this in Victoria seem to come at conveniently regular intervals and our next stop in Beechworth is the final one for the day. There is time to relax and recharge and amble the well-preserved and elegant Victorian streets, browse the independent stores and plan what fine local produce we can sample over dinner. In the end we go for the brewery and wood-fired pizza, though both of us choose a glass of local red instead of the many ales. This would be a good choice for perhaps another time, with a pair of bikes in tow.

Beechworth of course hosts its namesake bakery and we called in the next morning to stock up for the final leg of our trip home. The road from here to Wodonga was charmingly beautiful in the early morning light. And then you hit the NSW border and everything changes.

The landscape is more indistinct and ordinary and being back on the Hume Highway hardly helps. The next ‘big’ place after Albury – Gundagai – is a mere 166 kilometres away. But there is always a random town with shit coffee and a giant submarine to break things up. And isn’t that a wonderfully reassuring fact, a beauty in its own right, another pill swallowed on the road to road trip addiction.