The final furlong -Victoria

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Well it's over, the Australian part anyway! After 12 weeks and 20000km, 4 Timezones and huge changes of Climate we spent our last days of the trip heading for parts of Victoria that we had missed. We went to Mildura to see the Murray river and Bendigo to see the art gallery that up to Lake Eildon and the Cathedral Ranges and Marysville before finally getting back to Melbourne on Monday.
So camping didn't resume,mainly due to very wet weather.
If we had spent more time watching the news and less time watching the Paralympics we might have known about the bad flooding in parts of Victoria and as we drove through the detour and through Charlton we learned that a man has died after his Ute was swept away.
We did see lots of wildlife including LOTS of emu and a thrilling sighting of a wombat that was glossy, healthy and a gorgeous confer brown.
Many of the emu we saw (plural of emu anyone????) were killed on the road. Now I lament all road deaths and wish people would take more care but it has to be said that an expired emu looks so much like Rod Hulls emu that I was surprised by the resemblance and giggled a bit. Curiously a living emu looks less like the puppet.
Our visit to Bendigo included the cathedral and the art gallery. I was keen to see the finalists and winner of the Paul Grant Drawing Prize.
I loved many of the works but the winner would not have been my pick, just goes to show how subjective art is.
At Lake Eildon we had a look round and then used the boat ramp to get the spare wheel dropped and washed as we still carry Sourh Australian mud.
At Marysville we visited the Phoenix museum. We had heard of the Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 and knew that some people had perished in Marysville and most of the village had be wiped out. A steel band called Pans of Fire had been formed by the community and we had seen them play.
Well the museum was very poignant and the effects of the fire are still visible with some building plots still empty while the owners not yet ready to return or rebuild.
Marysville is a lovely little town in the high country but we were very aware that there are few roads and more than one fire would leave folk trapped. and unable to get away.
We are now in an apartment in Prahan, Melbourne. Having unloaded all our stuff we are now in a mess but have to get everything ready for shipping by the end of the week.
Our trip to New Zealand starts in a week but we have a lot of work to do to get ready. If there is any interest I might be able to keep blogging so let me know if you are interested.

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