A lost weekend in a motel in Warrnambool, with bonus footwear log!

Well, I made it. I'm slobbed on the allegedly queen-sized bed in my room at the City Heart Motel, wearing nothing but a wet facewasher on my head. I'm waiting to find out if I actually got sunburned today or just overheated.

 It's not the weekend but it might as well be. The centre of town has people in it, and the beach too of course, but everywhere else I went I saw nobody at all except people in cars. This was weird but also fantastic. It was a little like that brilliant NZ movie The Quiet Earth but not postapocalyptic - more like being in a dream. Which is essentially what today was like.  I just rode around looking at stuff with my headphones in, listening to a playlist I made on the train on the way here, of music I liked in the mid 1980s. I only really managed to go over the northwest end of town.

Pictures:

Fairholme (Sparehome)

Bonny Doon! Still!

The greatest letterbox since the world began is still there, although the house has gone.

The pool is as lovely as ever - but deserted - why?

Relief, and yes, elation that this is still there.

My first secondary school. I was thrilled to bits that the gates to the grounds were open and I could just go in there and prowl around. The Catholicness of it all is unrepentant and undiminished. I got thrown out of here just before the beginning of the era I'm interested in but it was still great to go and poke around

This little subterranean doorway is the reason I was so thrilled. Last night I was lying in bed thinking about much I'd like to go look at it again. The door was locked of course but it wasn't locked one time in 1985, and I went in the dark stone basement with my friend and we stole three of the 1960s evening dresses hanging up in there. We somehow determined that these dresses had belonged to the nuns before they became nuns. I was still wearing one of them ten years later. It was very stiff apricot satin with a scoop neck, a tiny waist and a big full skirt

Thought I'd try the door again but this time it was locked

Morris Rd milk bar still kicking arse

This is epic Warrnambool. Stand on one hill and you can see another one opposite. And regardless of which direction you're facing, always there's a water tower. This is Beamish St looking across Raglan Pde towards the sea

a couple of good finds in the opshop

 And, then after all that, I really wanted a drink; I went down to the Caledonian Hotel, not expecting no trouble - after all they didn't have a problem letting me in there when I was fourteen - but my Birkenstocks didn't make the footwear cut!! So I'm going to have a shower now and get dressed and try again, this time somewhere a lot less salubrious. Because I haven't brought any other shoes with me and Rauerts Footwear will be shut by now. 

**update: definitely sunburnt.**