Month: February 2016

 

We have spent a hot few days in Glenrowan and the surrounding district and it has been a good camp.

 

It is currently 39 deg with a hot northerly wind.

The Glenrowan Caravan and Tourist Park is nestled back into the foothills behind the town.

Shotgun blasts from the hill behind remind us of the days when the Kelly gang roamed this area.

 

 

 

 

 

The park pool has received good use each afternoon for a welcome cool off.

Daily visitors have included the mandatory grey kangaroos and numerous blue wrens

in the morning and evening feeding on ground level insects.

 

 

 

 

Our trip out to Samaria Farm, where they have over 3000 Damask Roses, was rewarded with some roses still surviving the heat. A Devonshire coffee with homemade blackberry jam and real cream capped off our stay nicely.

 

 

 

 

A quick stop on the way home at the Tatong Pub completed the loop on back roads.

 

Benalla, known as the “hometown”of Ned Kelly,  has enabled us to restock provisions.

The local wall art is quite a feature around town and the lake is a relaxing central feature.

 

 

 

 

 

We took a drive out to King Valley with a stop for lunch in the bush beside the King River

 

 

 

which was flowing well and returned to camp via Wangaratta.

 

 

 

Packing up camp in the morning and off to the head waters of the Murray.

Our 4 days at The Travellers Rest Park in Charlton has been one of our best camps so far.

The town has certainly lived up to its name as “The Friendly River Town”.

 

 

 

 

At just $18 a night, for a powered site with excellent facilities and amenities, you can’t go wrong.

The manager, Wayne, and staff of volunteers who continue to develop and look after this park are a credit to themselves and their town.

Travellers Rest straddles the Avoca River and the north and south sides of the park are linked by a suspension bridge. It is an open, clean and well maintained park adjacent to the town and swimming pool where admission is free.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Herb gardens are a nice touch and although suffering from the heat and drought still have some hardy survivors. The view from our dining room is terrific as we look out on the river gums.

 

The local attractions brochure produced by the park has given us some good spots to explore and numerous bird species abound.

The Burrow rolls out tomorrow morning as we head for “Kelly Country” for a few days before joining The Murray River near its headwaters and following it west.

While in Yamba 3 youngsters chased down an ice cream van and the oldest one said: “Mister, 3 ice creams please and we’ll pay you on Tuesday.”  Enterprising…

At a stop on the Manning River: “We are not really a caravan park, we don’t have EPTPOS.”

Ninety Mile Beach. A sad but true moment as we watched lifesavers being trained how to pick up needles on the beach using gloves and tongs.

Melbourne. Being in a shopping centre full of mobile post boxes.

Jugiong during a visit to the old school we nearly stepped on a brown snake!! Afterwards went to buy a loaf of bread only to be asked for $9.50. Drove 25 km on principle and paid half that. Hmmm!

Ballarat. A camp NYE gathering brought out the hill-billies. Long haired, bearded and toothless, both men and women.

Stawell. Camp raided twice by local police and people taken away. The remainder of their camp did a runner in the middle of the night a couple of days later.

 

 

 

 

We have enjoyed a day of exploring around Charlton and surrounds.

 

A run out to Wooroonok Lakes revealed a great camp spot on the lakesideand further on we turned off to the remnants of the town of Glenloth, which was settled in the 1870’s.

 

 

 

We saw the remains of the old hall, the hotel and the weighbridge and original silos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The trees reached across the road in places. The only signs of inhabitation in Glenloth were three people scratching in the dirt outside a property covered in the remains of old disused agricultural machinery.

 

 

Backtracking to Charlton we ventured out to Mt Jeffcott and drove the track about 1 km up to the summit which offered excellent views over the surrounding flat and dry Wimmera plains.

We put up a mob of Eastern Grey kangaroos on the track.

We had hoped for some fishing here but it is pretty non-existent at present.

More exploring tomorrow

We have just spent two great days in The Grampians and our visit coincided with The Halls Gap Jazz Festival. This is the last year the festival will be held in Halls Gap due to the risk of bush fire in the extreme Feb heat conditions.

 

 

 

With the backdrop of The Grampians it will be a hard act to follow.

 

We have walked our little legs off and have seen some lovely sights in and around Halls Gap with visits to Boroka Lookout, The Balconies and McKenzie Falls.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The latter pushing our heart rates up on the climb back up.

We took a trip across to Wartook and deviated off the track down Asses Ears Rd.

Anything that wasn’t loose now is!!

 

 

 

 

 

The National Park and Cultural Centre “Brambuk” was a worthwhile stop.

In our couple of days here we have seen grey kangaroos, emus, black cockatoos, sulphur crested cockatoos, kookaburras, rufous fantails, blue wrens, scarlet robins plus a fox and brown snake.

 

We enjoyed a good yarn with the publicans of the Brim Hotel. Rod and Carmel took over the closed pub 2 years ago and have built it up to be a busy food and watering hole. So much so that they are forced to close on Mondays to get a break.

It has been an enjoyable stay in Brim and the lakeside park has been a great spot to camp, with power, showers, toilets and tank water. At just $10 a night you can’t fault it.

 

 

 

 

A morning walk around the lake has been a nice start to the day.

The painted silos are well worth a trip to Brim which may have been not much more that a dot on the map until January this year, when the artwork was finished.

After a couple of hot days it has been lovely to have cheese and biscuits beside the lake.

A smart magpie managed to find grubs in the only bit of green grass out here.

 

 

All in all a well spent 2 days before heading off to Stawell and Halls Gap.

When a Brisbane artist decided to paint murals on some defunct silos in regional Victoria, he had no idea of the questions they would create.

Guido van Helten has turned the tiny town of Brim, with a population of about 100, into a tourist destination overnight, and social media is cluttered with photos of his work.

People are in awe of the four characters, standing 30 metres tall, on the iconic Australian structures.

But they want answers.

“Who are these people?” “Are they Brim locals?” “What are their stories?”

You will not, however, find the real stories of those people here, because Guido van Helten requested the mystery be maintained.

“I don’t want this to be about individual people specifically,” he said.

“It’s about this place, it’s about the community and, on a broader scale, the whole Wimmera region.

“If you leave the anonymity to these people and people see whoever they want to see, they can have their own connection to the work.”

So here we are in The Burrow on a rather warm summer day and we will stay a couple of nights here in Brim Lakeside Park.

Back in The Burrow again, we left Melbourne this morning and headed west via Ballarat and “Bruce’s” selected route

We took a back road through Cardigan Village. Carngham, and Emu Mountain to Streatham where we joined the Glenelg Highway for the run across to Lake Bolac.

Overnight here and then we head up the west side of The Grampians to Brim

After leaving Sydney on Tuesday morning we arrived at The George Harcourt Inn in Canberra and enjoyed catching up with friends for lunch.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our plan was to go on to Holbrook for an overnight stay but we changed plans enroute and stayed at Gundagai.

Met Dad and Dave, Mum and Mabel and had a fellow ask us who these characters were.

We wonder who remembers them from their youth.

Surely those who do will be showing their age!!

 

 

Took some shots of the old bridges that we drove over some 50 years or more ago, and Gundagai railway station, before heading off and detouring to Towong on Wednesday morning.

 

 

 

 

We will be camping there later this month and decided to check the site out. The Murray is flowing strongly through Towong Reserve and we look forward to getting back there. Trout are being caught on Scrub Worms and the odd Cod on cheese.

 

Re-joining the Hume Highway at Wodonga at around 3pm, we drove on to Melbourne with a strong and gusty head wind, and were thankful not to have The Burrow in tow.

Glen and Jack had dinner ready when we arrived and we are grateful yet again for their hospitality.

Picked up a stone chip in the windscreen thanks to road works between Corryong and Wodonga, and after getting that fixed tomorrow morning we will get The Burrow ready to leave Sunday morning for The Grampians