The hotel with two names.

Term break. Four times a year now; they seem to happen every few weeks. We had driven out of Melbourne mid-morning under a slate sky and a rain-blowing southerly on a cold late-winter Saturday. North, north, north: trying to outrun the weather.

Around midday we pulled in for lunch on the run at a truckstop cafe on a great curving main road in a town west of Bendigo: salty, deep-fried, battered food: food you'd probably never eat standing still or sitting at a table. Food that reaches way down into the prehistoric DNA. Does salt enhance the view of mountains sliding by on the horizon or, conversely, does that incredible panorama make the food taste better?

After the western roll we corrected northwards again, munching, and in the rear vision mirror grey fingers of cloud groped towards us, chasing again, like fingers of a giant. Small towns swung or swam into view and out again; Bridgewater on Loddon, Serpentine (describes the river, not the town), Durham Ox and Kerang, a 1950s relic with a grid CBD all verandahed for shade. The rain caught us and dropped in great drumming sheets on the windscreen and turned the road ahead into treacherous quicksilver.

Then suddenly we drove out of it like you walk out of a circus tent into the sunlight. At the same time, the Murray came into view: not the river itself at first, but the telltale snaking parade of river red gums that follow its course from mountain to sea. Yes, the river's course wanders but it is surprising it doesn't meander more: the flatness of this territory is exhausting in its sheer impudence, disallowing any sense of progression. You drive for an hour and get nowhere.

Finally, Lake Boga: a lake and a town, but the town is irrelevant: the prime real estate lives around the eight-mile shore of the lake; great sprawling properties fronting a perfect 360-degree circle of water, like it was man-made, and enjoying sunsets to make Monet kick a hole in a canvas. The town, a clock's pendulum to the lake, is a main street running perpendicular to the northbound highway, with a hotel next to a pharmacy and that's it. There might have been a post office around a corner. Fading metal plates decorated the outside walls of the hotel, displaying ancient black and white photos of its history; scenes of 1890s horses tethered to long-gone railings, farm workers standing stolidly at the bar, stage coaches spilling crinoline and parasols. Oddly, the hotel had two names: the Commercial Hotel and the Lake Boga Hotel. Possibly an early form of search engine optimisation, or maybe they just didn't change the old sign.