Going for Gold?

Although a documented Citizen and Freeman of the City of London, the greatest city on earth, Mike is an Essex boy at heart.  Now when a town with the name of Maldon pops up on the map, well, we've just got to go and take a look.

We found Maldon to be a delightful little town, named in 1856 after the Essex town.  It grew to a population of about 30,000 during the gold rush and is now about 1,600.  Mike discovered a Chevrolet truck dating back to 1928 which was still in use. 

On again and Kim navigated us to Ballarat, another gold rush town, although this one remains a sizable place today.  On the way we passed Cricket Willow, which grows the timber for cricket bats.  We didn't stop – everyone knows that the world’s best cricket bat willow comes from Essex. 

At Ballarat we played tourists and spent the day at the Sovereign Hill gold mining town.  Whilst nothing like a theme park, it does seek to re-enact life at it was in Victorian times.  It would be so easy to ‘disneyfy’ it which would be awful, but instead they've done a really good job of retaining the authenticity without going overboard on gimmicks.  We thoroughly enjoyed our day there and I leave it to these photos to give you some idea of what we experienced.

And yes, we did find some grains of gold.  I’m not saying how much but suffice to say that a new Rolls Royce remains on hold!

Our day finished with a visit to the Gold Museum which was interesting but after a very active day, rather lost its lustre.  Funny how you can quickly tire of gold!

Wednesday, the following day, we motored on through places with biblical names such as Jordan and Ararat.  We found no Ark although we did find a main street lined with grape vines and a really good coffee shop.  Now wine is mentioned quite frequently in the bible but I'm pretty certain there's no reference to coffee.

We headed into an area known as Great Western and passed acre after acre of vineyards.  After a brief stop at the Seppelt Winery to check on their Sparkling Shiraz we continued into arable farmland which showed little but fields of golden stubble, mainly grazed by sheep which eat the remnants of the wheat and barley after harvesting – it’s all very efficient farming we were told.

We camped next to the Giant Koala.  He didn't look too impressed.  The feeling was mutual as the campsite was, shall we be polite and say, ‘not up to the cost’.  And Mike was bitten by a bull ant.

Still, the golden sunset was lovely.

Although our bush camping might be described as basic, it’s not uncomfortable as Kim will testify.  By the way, that’s Mike’s wine on the table so hands off.

And no, that’s not a gold block at the back of the Land Rover, just a waffle board to keep down the dust (which is not gold coloured).  Tomorrow we take a bit of a hike to the Pinnacles so we'll need a good night’s sleep.  G‘night all.

Up and Down in Victoria

After our bit of R&R with Peter and Carol, we set off from Melbourne in beautiful sunshine, negotiating the morning traffic and multiple sets of traffic lights with ease.  Now that the brakes are working properly, the pressure of driving in traffic whilst allowing double the normal stopping distance has gone.  It’s quite a novelty being able to pull up whenever necessary, without applying every bit of leg strength to the brake pedal.

Soon the urban landscape receded into the distance as we headed in a north easterly direction through the small town of Healesville then into the Yarra Ranges National Park. 

The gum trees stretched skywards and the forest floor was covered in giant ferns, some as large as trees.  Rich and exotic flora it most certainly was and Kim took photo after photo as we wound our way upwards on the narrow twisting road.

Stopping for a rest and another photo opportunity, we spotted some bull ants.  These fellows are something over an inch long and pack a mighty bite.  Fortunately they’re not particularly aggressive so we tend to keep a distance from them.

We made our way through the Yarra Ranges into the Kinglake National Park.  Perhaps an explanation of National Parks is needed for non-Australian readers.  They are usually huge, in the tens of thousands of hectares.  In the southern part of Australia they tend to be heavily forested, go north and it’s scrub and desert.  Diverse is the term that comes to mind.  Kinglake National Park was badly affected by the bush fires in 2009 and the scars are still visible today.

A dirt track lead to our chosen camping area where the sites were roughly marked out with logs and the facilities provided are what are generally known as ‘’long drop toilets’.  Basic yes but perfectly adequate.  Shower, no.  Perhaps tomorrow.

We should explain that Vin Rouge is equipped to deal with these conditions.  We have LED lighting under the awning, under the tent, inside the tent and over the cooker.  We carry our own water supply and our kitchen ‘galley’ is set up on the back door of the Land Rover.  We’re more or less self sufficient, subject to topping up with diesel to go places, for at least two weeks – although we’ve never needed to put that to the test (yet).

Twenty paces from our camp and it looks like this.

Next morning we were visited by flocks of small wrens but photographing them proved difficult as they are so well camouflaged.  However, they made for an entertaining breakfast.

Next stop, a small town called Seymour.  We knew nothing about this place but learned that it is home to several large military bases and has a memorial to those Australians who took part in the Vietnam War.  The names of over 60,000 service personnel are listed along with eleven tracker dogs.  Although quite new and far from reaching the maturity that is obviously planned, it was a moving tribute.

Bendigo was the next stop on our journey.  Gold was found here in the late 1880s and deep mining was carried out until the mid 1900s.  The Deborah Mine is accessed just a few streets from the middle of the town and we joined a tour that descended to the first level, just 60 metres.  Below us were a further sixteen levels, the lowest four now flooded.  Although designed for tourists, from the tour we learned quite a bit about the complex and hazardous processes involved in obtaining minutes amount of gold from very large quantities of quartz rock – three quarters of a teaspoonful per ton of rock if our memories are correct.

In the centre of Bendigo is what is known as a ‘poppet head’, the large structure that exists above a mine and is used for lowering the miners and raising the rock.  We climbed this for the view, and to show that we are not put off by this sort of exercise, climbed another one a couple of days later.  The views were vast.  Set high on hills, it is possible to see up to 40 kilometres on a clear day.  We were fortunate and experienced superb views of the town, then rural farmland and in the distance, hills and mountains.

Then we went on a tram.  When Bendigo was a gold town with a population of 30,000 or more, trams were the transport of choice.  Now much diminished in scale, a few trams still run along the central tracks.  All very nostalgic and rather fun – at least, that’s what we thought.

We enjoyed a couple of days in Bendigo, staying at a very civilised camp site with steaming hot showers and a brand new camp kitchen that we used instead of our own facilities.  It became quite a social centre.  On the first night we met up with a wonderful couple, Eric and Val, who, twenty years ago had cycled all the way around Australia and were still camping out in their retirement years.  At the opposite end of the age scale, we met up with a lad generally know as Jackson BT who had just won a major tennis tournament and is well on his way to a future career in the game.  We’ll be watching out for him in the next few years.  His dad Craig was as enthusiastic as his son and it was a real joy to see such dedication in so young a devotee.

The Murray River starts in the Snowy Mountains in NSW and finally reaches the sea in South Australia after 2,375 kilometres.  It’s one of the world’s major rivers, it’s Australia’s longest and it irrigates large parts of the State of Victoria.  We found a small part of it at Echuca which claims to be Australia’s paddle steamer capital.  Well they had collected quite a number of these old river boats and some provided trips on the muddy, turgid waters.  Obviously we had to go and boarded the PS Canberra, built in 1912.  We were surprised to find that the Marshalls wood fired steam engine was built in Gainsborough in England in 1923 and had been in more or less continuous service ever since. 

The Murray is short of water and is about four metres lower than it should be.  Now and again the paddles could be heard churning mud rather that water.

Today is Sunday 7^th April.  In the last few days we’ve been up high and low down.  It’s all part of the experience and we’re enjoying it.

A couple of days in Melbourne

We like Melbourne.  It has a real buzz about it.  People go about their business with a purpose, as do the huge network of trams.  Last time we were here we played tourists so this time we took our time and took in just a few places that we particularly wanted to see.

Arriving by boat is a bit of a surprise.  First the mainland of Australia appears over the horizon, then a very narrow entrance into the harbour is negotiated.  Expectations turn to arrival, but there’s nearly another three hours to go before reaching the Melbourne ferry terminal.  Like quite a few Australian harbours, once past the torturous entrance the natural harbour is wide, deep and free from any ocean swell.

With Vin Rouge deep in the bowels of the ship, we had visions of waiting ages before disembarking, but it turned out that we were the ‘keystone’.  No one could move until we moved first.  The decks above had already been cleared and it was an odd experience driving up through the completely empty spaces.  Then suddenly we were in the open, through the gates and away, delays being due only to seemingly never ending sets of traffic lights.

We stayed with good friends Peter and Carol, who had dinner and drinks (or was that drinks and dinner?) ready when we arrived.  They’re great company and it was good to catch up with their news since we’d last seen them at Port Fairy a few weeks ago.  We were also able to make use of their fast internet connection to catch up with the links that we had not been able to use in Tasmania.  Internet through the mobile phone down there at best reached dial-up speed but was often slower and sometimes just nonexistent.  It was wonderful being able to see a movie of our grand-daughter Leilani and to use Skype to talk with her and her mum and dad in Wisconsin.

Whilst Vin Rouge was in the care of Ritters for a new brake servo and vacuum pump (we can now stop whenever we want!) we took to public transport, arriving at Flinders Street Station sufficiently late to avoid the morning rush hour.

A late breakfast of pancakes and ice cream is probably not a recommended diet, but we enjoyed it anyway before taking the (free) tourist bus around the sights.  To start with it was crowded so we had to stand and saw little but the adjacent road surface, but in due course we found seats and did the entire loop.  The Comedy Festival is taking place and we watched some street theatre for a while before deciding that the children were enjoying the slapstick more than us, so we moved on.

Melbourne has some lovely architecture and we were quite content wandering the streets taking in the views.

Next day it was an ‘alternative’ coffee shop with Carol where the seating was entirely outside on milk crates.  Not the most comfortable but the coffee was good.  We parted company, us to continue gazing at buildings, Carol to an appointment with the ophthalmologist, after which we met up and returned to find out how Peter was fairing as he’d been a bit crook for a couple of days.. 

Cities are great, but Vin Rouge is best suited to less urban environs and so we moved on, northward to the Yarra Ranges, the subject of our next blog when we get there.

Goodbye to Tasmania

We arrived at a place called ‘Penguin’.  Why it’s called that we don’t know.  There didn’t seem to be any real live penguins around and the “Penguin Primary School’ was full of small humans.  However, we did find some plastic penguins and Kim liked this one.

Tasmania is not a huge island.  It’s about the size of Ireland but has more mountains.  Vin Rouge climbed quite a few of them, grinding away in second gear, twisting and turning through hairpin bends, rising higher and higher, the views becoming ever more splendid.  Then quite suddenly a peak is reached and the climb becomes a descent.  By hanging on to the lower gears through more twists and turns we hold down the speed until again the views change to undulating dairy farming country along the valley floors or a lake formed by a dam that provides electrical power in addition to drinking water and recreational activities.  

It’s quite hard work hauling almost two and a half tons around all the bends but periodic stops to enjoy the view (and for Kim to take yet more photos) makes it all worthwhile.

We enjoyed three days of mountain scenery with delightful camping sites.  How’s this for a view over the morning cuppa?

The final couple of days in the island state we spent on the coast at the Bay of Fires, so named on Cook’s voyage of discovery from the number of aboriginal camp fires in the area.  

We can confirm that the sea really is this colour of blue.

That Kim enjoyed the blue of the sea and the whiteness of the sand is evident.  We walked the entire length of the beach, and back again – and that was quite enough exercise for one day.

Our last day and we visited Evansdale where we perused a surprisingly large market and checked out the statue commemorating what has become and annual event of penny-farthing bicycle races.  Quite why these aces occur is all very curious and we did not manage to find any real answers.

Kim had been hoping to spot a platypus in the wild and although we’d done a great deal of searching, the evasive little critters were not cooperating.  Her last chance was at Latrobe, where we made enquiries about all the most likely places where a platypus might hang out.  We walked and looked, and looked and walked, all to no avail.  However:

OK, you work it out!

As the sun faded the temperature dropped. Our last night’s camp by the sea at Devonport was definitely cold so we reverted to our ‘in-tent central heating facility’ – a hot water bottle. Early next morning we were woken by a blast from the ferry’s horn as it arrived.  We packed up in the dark and joined the queue of vehicles waiting to be loaded onto Spirit of Tasmania II.  Directed to a lower deck well below the waterline, we parked and made our way to the passenger deck to find a corner for the nine hour trip.

And so with fond memories we left Tasmania behind.  In four weeks we had seen a lot of lovely countryside, met some very kind and interesting people and sampled some Tassie food (the cheeses are excellent).  But it was time to say goodbye and return to the Australian mainland.

Melbourne and a date with Ritters, the Land Rover specialist, beckons.

The rain stopped, well almost

We left Kim in the middle of a rope bridge over the river Franklin.  Happily she made it back to safety without mishap and we ended the day’s driving at Strahan in an overpriced and third rate camp.  The longest running play in Australia takes place nightly at a tiny open-air theatre right by the dockside.  ‘The Ship That Never Was’ has a cast of two, but what it lacks in numbers it simply makes up from the audience.  Amongst others, Mike was co-opted for a minor role, simply to act vomiting into his hat at periodic intervals.  As a result, Mike is definitely not considering a new career in acting!

Next day, after yet another night of rain, we joined the ‘Eagle’, a large catamaran, for a cruise on the Gordon River.  We’d been told by various folk who we met along the way that it was an experience not to be missed.  The weather was appalling as we left, throwing it down, and we wondered what sort of a day we were going to have with little visibility through the rain streaked windows.  But as we left Strahan in the distance the weather improved.  Sunny it was not, but the skies sort of cleared, visibility improved and for once it stopped raining.  Until we reached Sarah Island when again the heavens opened.  Five minutes later the rain suddenly stopped and we all trouped ashore (with a certain amount of trepidation).  Our guide, who turned out to be one of the cast from last night’s play, took us on an entertaining and informative walk around the former penal colony, pointing out the ruins that were the only clues to the island’s previous role.

We were fascinated as much by the way that nature had reclaimed the island.  New growth dominated; trees, shrubs, grasses, ferns and especially mosses were everywhere.  It was an extraordinary landscape.

The entrance to the large natural Macquarie Harbour is through a narrow passage over a bar known as ‘Hells Gates’, a term that was given by the convicts who were sent there.  Once through the passage into the harbour, life was ‘hell’.  The route in was torturous and we were not surprised to learn that it had been the scene of numerous shipwrecks with many lives lost.  By comparison, the Gordon River was calm and serene with the tree clad hills reflected in such a way that it seemed their image was perfectly inverted.  Impenetrable rainforest encroached over the water and mosses draped every surface.  True rainforest indeed.

Lunch on board was particularly good, with Tasmanian smoked salmon a key feature.  We celebrated with a bottle of Tasmanian wine, only later trying to decide what it was we were celebrating.  Was it the cruise or the fact that the rain had stopped?  Somehow it didn’t seem to matter.  Tasmanian Atlantic salmon (a bit of a misnomer) is farmed, it’s not wild.  We passed dozens of these farms in the clear waters of Macquarie Harbour.

Returning ashore to Vin Rouge, we found a group of people discussing the various merits of our set up.  Plenty of questions were asked and views exchanged.  Then a young chap arrived who had waved to us on the road the previous day.  He was also in a Land Rover Defender and came over for a chat.
The next day started, as usual, with yet more rain.  Then it brightened and the view ahead was softened by steam arising from the warm bitumen as the sun made its appearance through the clouds.

We arrived at the village of Waratah.  Deposits of tin and copper were found there in the late 1800s.  The ample water supply was used to power the mining machinery and one of the first electrical generators was installed.  It’s all gone now; there’s just an attractive waterfall to show where industry had sprung up from nowhere.

A short drive took us to the coast, to Cape Table, noted for its stunning views and the amount of tulips and poppies that are grown there.  In Stanley “The Nut”, a volcanic plug, dominates the skyline.  We took the lazy way up on the chairlift and walked the 2 km trail around the top.  The views were indeed picturesque, white sandy beaches stretching into the distance, deep blue sea and rich pastures inland.

We wandered into a large shed where wooden boats were being built and restored.  The boat builder, a certain Mr Sims (close!), obviously an enthusiast and a friend of Gryff Reece-Jones, chatted with us for ages, explaining his preference for huon pine as the timber of choice and how he approached the task of restoring old boats.  It was all very interesting but we needed to drag ourselves away to make a quick visit to the Tarkine Forest.

The Tarkine is listed in the top ten of the world’s wildernesses.  It is remote, but some of it is accessible by road.

We touched upon a few areas which were certainly unspoiled and seemed to be devoid of people.

However, as it was reaching the end of the day we decided that some link with civilisation would be the preferred option for overnighting and returned passing a splendid view of the Nut to Rocky Cape.

A most convivial evening was spent with a couple touring in their camper trailer.  Can’t recall what we discussed but the wine was fine.