Week 11 Sun 29 Apr - Sat 5 May

Week 11 Sun 29 Apr – Sat 5 May

Smythesdale (Ballarat) 29 - 30 Apr

Today was really cold and a cold breeze was blowing – definitely more clothes required. We made the 20km drive into Ballarat to see the sights and being a Sunday, the Ballarat streets were not busy, and to our surprise a lot of the shops were shut! We made the most of our walk, taking in all the history of this city, so many beautiful, historic buildings and so spread out. 

Ballarat is a big city and the city centre is so spread out, it is hard to understand where town starts and stops as it covers so much area.  The main street is wide and a cleverly designed in one way system so traffic runs in both directions either side a massive centre strip which is lovingly decorated with gardens, bandstand, fountains and beautiful statues.  One thing that Tony & I really noticed was that there were no take away type food shops in the city, all the food places were cafés – making it very hard just to get a pie or something and not a sit down meal.  After lunch we headed out to the Botanical Gardens to Lake Wendouree.  There is a little tram ride here and we just made the stop after parking the car.  The ride is only 1 km long, volunteer based and a really nice and pleasant little ride. The weather was getting colder as the day expired and we could tell we were in for a lovely 0 degrees or less tonight. 

Monday morning we got up late due to it being so cold we just didn’t want to get out of bed – too warm! But we finally got going and headed for the Botanical Gardens which are very pleasant and has a lovely avenue of Giant Sequoier trees and busks of each Prime Minister from 1900 to present day (although Julia is not there yet – ends at Kevin Rudd).  The sun was trying to come out and getting warmer so walking around was becoming a little more bearable. We found a few shops to stock up a few supplies and then made our way to Sovereign Hill.  As it was now 3.30pm it was really too late to go into the complex so we decided to do this on our way out of town before travelling to Bendigo.

Bendigo  1–3 May

It was nice to see the sun and it was a pleasant day much warmer than the previous.  We got away at a reasonable hour and walked into Sovereign Hill by 11.00 am.  We promised ourselves that we had to be on the road to Bendigo by 3.30pm.  Both Tony & I really enjoyed Sovereign Hill, walking around seeing everything on offer, but unfortunately we didn’t get to do some of the tours on offer due to timeframes, with a quick world wind tour of the Mine Museum, which was very good.  We managed to get away and started heading for Bendigo at 3.30pm.  We arrived at the caravan park in Bendigo just on 5.00pm – and set up by 6.00pm, drink in hand by 6.15 pm – not bad.

Bendigo is so different to Ballarat, for one, the city centre is much smaller and a little more condensed but still a very lovely place with some grand buildings, plus trams. We parked the car and then headed for the Tourist Information to get a Discovery Pass (4 attractions at a discounted price).  Our first attraction was the ‘Historical Talking Tram’ which we traveled on to get to the Central Deborah Mine.  The mine tour is 1.5 hours in length and takes you down 2 levels of the mine.  You get to act like a miner with the helmet, headlight and battery pack on while walking through the maze of tunnels underground.   It was a really interesting tour and very dark without lights, wet with the water seeping through the rock but a rather pleasant 17 degrees.  We both really enjoyed this tour and then had a look around the top at the number of other parts of the mine. Again the day disappeared and we still have another 2 attractions to do tomorrow.

The second attraction we visited was the Chinese Dragon Museum and Chinese Gardens.  This was a really good museum and has so much Chinese memorabilia about the mining days and more present settlements, plus some extremely amazing furniture and artifacts.  Of course the other important part of the museum is the fact that they have the oldest dragon over 100 years old (now retired) and the newer Sun Loon and longest Dragon in the world, which is still used every Easter in the Bendigo festival and takes 52 men to carry it.  The head of the Dragon alone weighs 26kgs – hard work but great to watch.  The gardens were also very lovely complete with spitting fish and goldfish in the water.

After this we travelled out on the Talking Tram to the Joss House – a Chinese temple – the only one remaining in the world and beautifully preserved.  There are 3 rooms with a number of temples and as it is still an actual place of worship – there are incense and flowers all over the temples.  A great bit of history preserved.

Friday we were off to Echuca, the home of the Paddle steamer on the Murray River, but before we left Bendigo, we had two more things to do, see the Botanical Gardens (small and pleasant) and the famous Bendigo Pottery Museum.  Surprisingly, the museum was quite well done, and we spent over an hour and a half walking around looking at the various bits and pieces and getting to see inside Kilns.  Of course we had to buy a piece of pottery and we bought a lovely vase made by one of the potters at the museum. 

Echuca  4–5 May

We then made our way to Echuca passing a number of towns in between, Rochester being the biggest.  We are staying at a park on the Murray River not far from the Port.  It is really nice as you can walk along the levy bank to the Port and into town from the park – no car required.  The Murray River stills looks fairly devastated after the last lot of floods, trees raked all over the banks and the scars of volumes of water still dominant, but the Paddle steamers and houseboats still line the shores of the river and still move up and down, going about their business.  We booked a tour on the EmmyLou Paddle steamer for Saturday morning.  The weather was slightly warmer than previous days and the sun was out – a great day for touring on the Murray.

The floods have really devastated the Murray with trees and roots still evident.  But all the Paddle steamer boats are all still running as are pleasure craft and rentals.  We had a great time cruising up the river for an hour and then hit the town – there was shopping to be done.  We found a couple of items that we had to buy and by the time we had done one side over, our tummies took over – ice cream necessary for some sustenance.  Refreshed we did the other side of our shopping spree and then made our way home.    Echuca is an eclectic mix of old and new that really does work quite well – a nice place to stay for a few days.