Holbrook Submarine

While today is a scheduled 'cooking' post day, I don't actually have any cooking posts to make due to various reasons. I did make a 2 minute noodle based dish last night for a snack, and have had a bunch of toasted sandwiches, but with a freezer full of food, and my head and back not treating me kindly, I've not been able to get any cooking done. The noodles if anyone is interested were boiled in 2 cups of chicken stock for 2 minutes, then drained and put back in the pan. I added a chunk of butter (about 1-2 tablespoons) and 2 decent teaspoons of Philadelphia cream cheese (garlic and herb). Stirred that in until it had mostly melted before adding about 50 grams of chopped up smoked salmon. stirred that through and heated it for a bit more and served. Pretty tasty for using up some leftovers (the smoked salmon was getting close to code)

Anyway, on with the actual post.

Holbrook

This town of less than 2000 people located just off the Hume Highway almost 500 km from Sydney and just under 400 km from Melbourne has an odd attraction for an inland town, in that it's home to the HMAS Otway. A submarine, or at least the above waterline portion of it's shell, was purchased from a metal scrapping company after decommission in 1994. The Otway was an Oberon class submarine. But why would an inland farming community want a submarine?

^{HMAS Otway. Scotish built. Commissioned in April '68 and Decommissioned February '94}

Well, Holbrook was called Germanton up until 1915, but with the anti-German sentiment of the time it was needing to be renamed, and from the shortlist they chose the new name of Holbrook in honour of Lt. Norman Holbrook, the first submariner to be awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions aboard HMS B11 in the Dardanelles during December 1914.

^{As well as the Otway, the park contains a few other artefacts, including this section of HMS B11}

It was a nice sunny day while I was there, and while I'd have liked to go into the associated museum, they suggest at least half an hour, and entry fee ($5 concession/$6 adult) both were more than I was willing to pay. Instead I had lunch and got back on the road to Melbourne.

^{They also have a duck's arse, because the tail of a submarine is amusing and it goes well in an Australian family tourist destination}

The submarine situated near the Northern end of town, right next to the main road (which was the old Hume Highway before the bypass went in) is easy to find and situated in a nice grassed area with some trees and public toilets nearby. There is a cafe on site as well, which offers some decent food for the visitors.

Hopefully by next week I'll have cooked something, or I'll come up with another topic to write on cooking post day

^{Upgoats made by the talented @ryivhnn}