Echuca to Melbourne

Echuca is a very pleasant town well focused on tourism.  The Paddle Steamers run regular river tours and are very popular.  There are plenty of coffee shops and eateries in the wharf area and a great bakery in which we enjoyed cream and apple turnovers.  The Wharf area has been well restored and is a good presentation of the river boat and railway traffic in the 1800’s.  We were amazed at the size of the red gum timbers used in the wharf structures and the quantity of them still available.  Echuca was the main/only place on the Murray where cattle and sheep could cross while travelling from NSW and Sydney to the Melbourne markets.  As usual, one entrepreneur was on hand to recognise this and set up a monopoly ferry crossing.  Of course he soon became rich and built several excellent buildings including the Star and Bridge Hotels opposite the wharf area.  The settlement that developed around the crossing became the towns of Echuca (Vic side) and Moama (NSW side).  The wood workers shed is producing some very nice pieces of furniture, etc  and it helps when you have such good timber to work with.  

'Emmy Lou' docking to load timber for our Mothers Day Lunch cruise

Paddle Steamer Houseboat - looks fun...

We enjoyed dinner at a very nice restaurant in the Wharf area overlooking the Murray.  The food was great.  Carol was also pleased to find some lovely gifts waiting at the Post Office when we arrived and in time for Mother’s Day.  We spent Sunday lunch on a paddle steamer restaurant the ‘Emmy Lou’.  It cruised up and down the river for an hour and a half while lunch was served and it was very enjoyable.  The lunch was good and as we were served first, we got to nurse a twin each while their Mother, Father and Grandparents got to eat their lunch.  It was nice and the Mother appreciated it a lot.  

Dray outside Woodturners Workshop

Restored Steam Engine at Wharf Museum

Old fashioned Carriage Rides - not the driver using his mobile phone!!

Wharf area

At the Wheel..

Traffic jam on the Murray

Echuca is also home to the National Holden Museum and it was worth a look.  It had the best examples of every model since the 48-215 you could imagine and included several prototypes from the factory that were not produced.  One of these was the Holden Hurricane which was a concept car built in 1969.  I saw it at the Brisbane Exhibition and haven’t seen or heard of it since.  It was the first Holden to have the 253ci V8 in it and was way ahead of its time.  We also visited a winery and military museum on the Moama side of the river.  They had some very good vehicles from WW1 and WW2 including the Canadian Canoe that the Australian Soldiers used to paddle into Singapore Harbour from the Krait Z and sink 7 Japanese ships during WW2.  This is the 3^rd part of this story I have seen in a year including at Singapore and at Exmouth, WA where the Krait sailed from.

Echuca Wharf

Huge Red Gum logs and timbers in Wharf refurb

Main Bedroom in Bridge Hotel

Lunch in main street - note wagon and log jinker outside Woodworkers Shop

Part of Military Vehicle display at Moama Winery

Canadian canoe from the Krait that raided Singapore Harbour in WW2

Paddlesteamers at Echuca Wharf

'P.S. Emmy Lou'

48-215 (FX) at Holden Museum

In great condition

Pair of very nice Monaro's. White is for sale at $80,000. (p.s. it has a Ford 9" diff)

Holden Hurricane concept car from 1969. Looks better than the car behind it!!

When we headed for Bendigo, we decided to go via Shepparton which is another large rural town and home to the SPC Ardmona fruit cannery.  The cannery is a huge place but unfortunately not offering tours.  We enjoyed smoko in one of many parks and loved the autumn colours with red, pink and golden leaves covering the ground. 

Bendigo surprised us as we knew it to be a gold mining town but were amazed at the beautiful city of 110,000 people that it has become.  It has many beautiful old stone buildings showing off the wealth produced from gold in days gone by.  We wandered the streets marvelling at them and also had a good long walk through the central park which has several fountains, a footy/cricket field, and a couple of multi-story old style red brick schools.  There was also a great display of chrysanthemums in the green house.  We spent several hours on a city tour on one of the refurbished ‘talking’ trams and enjoyed the sights and the scenery.  The well dressed volunteer conductor was good company and full of information also.  Another visit well worth the time was a tour of the Bendigo Pottery which uses local clay and has been operating since 1858.  They make heaps of crockery styles and we saw a potter spinning a number of large bowls.   On one side of the pottery is a very large antique shop with more old stuff than we have ever seen in one place.   It was fun wandering through and seeing many old toys and books from our childhood days; and older as well. 

Garry went on an underground gold mine tour at the Central Deborah Mine.  It was very well done with working displays and lots of real equipment still in working condition being displayed.  Bendigo’s gold is found in 17 parallel quarts reefs and is/was very high yielding.  The superpit in Kalgoorlie last year yielded 1.8 grams of gold per tonne of ore crushed.  Mines in Bendigo are still yielding in excess of 15 grams per tonne and in the early underground days yielded over 32 grams per tonne over many years and the Central Deborah Mine has given up 972 tonnes of gold in 103 years.  We also visited the Catholic Cathedral in Bendigo which sits on a hill near the CBD and is a very impressive building.  The church is in the shape of a cross with the main (long bottom leg) of the crucifix constructed in the 1800’s and the remaining top 3 legs finished in 1977.  There is seating for 1,200 and it is made of sandstone and limestone with timber roof arches and Italian marble flooring. The inside height from the floor to the top of the timber arches is 28m.  It is 75m from the inside of the back wall to the front wall behind the pulpit and the main spire is 86m high to the top of the cross.  The cross at the top of the spire weighs 3 tonnes and would have been a feat to put in place.  We have been enjoying some overcast, showery, cold days this week – true Victorian weather so we visited an Op shop and invested in some warm clothing again.

Bendigo park

CBD from top of a poppet head.

School built in wealthier times

Bendigo Creek in which the first gold was found

Mothers Day flower display

Bendigo Courthouse

61m down the Central Deborah Gold Mine

On the poppet head trolley way

One of several large kilns at Bendigo Pottery

Entrance to the Botanic Gardens

Ready to board the talking tram tour

Tram workshops with 19 operational and 4 under rebuild

Carol soaking up some history from the charming conductor

CBD fountain

Town Hall during a short break between showers

the Loong Dragon used at the inauguration of Australias Parliament in 1901

Gardens in Chinese Museum

Inside the Southern hemispheres largest wooden church.

The real thing...the Cathedral with a 28m ceiling

Striking at sunseet

autumn evening on High Street..

Leaving Bendigo we headed south towards Melbourne but took several side tracks off the freeway and enjoyed quite a few smaller villages and towns including Malmsbury (with its Avenue of Honor of about 3 kms of fully grown oak trees), Woodend, and Mount Macedon ( where all the rich Victorians live by the look of the mansions surrounded by acres of parkland).  It was a much nicer drive than straight down the freeway. 

Autumn is golden around here....

  As we arrived in Melbourne it was pouring with rain and still cold but we had arranged to go straight to a van repair shop so they could look at our hot water system.  It has been leaking for quite a while and needed attention.  Fortunately its leaks outside and not inside the van but still it needs fixing ASAP.  We had been warned that it was not going to be an easy job but the guy thought it would only take a few minutes to get out, repair overnight and put back in in the morning.  Alas, our warning was right and he has to take it out of the cupboard into the under bed space and out that way.  We return on Monday am for another go. 

We spent the day today riding the bus and tram into the city and visited the Art Gallery where Carol was looking forward to seeing the special show ‘Monet’s Garden’. She was very impressed and Garry enjoyed wandering among the many other great paintings that are hundreds of years old and perfect pictures.  There was also a Ballet and Fashion exhibition and some stone carvings that were more than 2,000 years old.  I never thought we would enjoy an Art Gallery as much as we do.