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Published: April 1st 2010
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We needed an early start today really, but the spot was so lovely that I have to confess; we dallied a little with breakfast and soaked in a little of the morning chorus by the Murray as we planned our day. It seems every town in this region has to lay claim to a part of the Ned Kelly story. The notorious gang leader certainly left his mark here some 130 years ago but given we also needed to travel down to Melbourne, we had to be a bit selective. But what I found fascinating is that this region is called Victoria’s Secret - and we really did discover a gem.
First stop was Rutherglen, with its wonderful Main Street. Here, we discovered a craft shop with the worst selection of stock in the world! They even had a cork board on sale for A$89 that I would have been so ashamed of if I had made it that I would never have made another! Eventually, we tracked down Parker’s Pies, an award winning pie shop, and despite the lure of Emu, Kangaroo, and even a Crocodile and Crab Meat Pie, we chose two traditional “Parker’s Pies” to have later
for lunch .
One of the brochures had photographs of two Chinese Burning Towers in a Cemetery somewhere along the road but no indication how to get there or what the place might be called. On a hunch, we turned off the main road thinking it might be signposted from the nearby village. Hopes dashed, we headed back for the main highway only to stumble across it “Carlyle Cemetery” on the road out. One feature of the old burial grounds (or perhaps all Australian cemeteries?) we’d not expected was that they were segregated; Roman Catholics here, Anglicans over there, Methodists in the far corner etc. The Chinese were buried with the Pagans! We found the Burning Towers along with several footstones dating back to when there was a flood of Chinese into the goldfields.
Onward to Chiltern, which I’d
been particularly interested to see as one of its claims was that you could see how the miners relaxed with a theatre and a billiard hall. I was rather put out when we turned up and found a note saying the owners had decided to close for the day (notice that theme just keeps bobbing along!) At least we were saved from having to admire the world’s biggest grape vine - according the Guinness Book of Records.
But what Chiltern did have, and what we were absolutely fascinated by was a Pharmacy. Old Mrs Dow was a female pharmacist back in the 30s when such a thing was most unusual. She and her husband ran the shop for years and decided to retire and sell it in 1968. Unfortunately for them, the town had been bypassed 2 years earlier and was suffering the fate of many of the small country towns and falling into decline. They couldn’t get a buyer. In 1985 she left the shop to the National Trust. It was absolutely fascinating as it was exactly as she had left it in 1968 - a real shop kept in a time bubble. We spent ages in there
- you would have loved it Sarah!
We kicked up towards Wodonga and Albury (NSW) in the Alpine foothills, both of which we’d been assured were worth seeing, but we rather felt were a bit of waste of time, and we were soon on our way to Yackandandah in the Indigo Valley. Gosh it was pretty - very hilly with almost a faint mist in the distance that made you think the air would have a slight chill to it ... until you got out of the van and realised it was nearly 30 degrees thank you very much! It was another really pretty place. It was also really quiet - mainly because most of the shops had shut for the weekend (were we missing something?!) Even the Tourist Information was closed - albeit with a post-it saying ‘back at 1.45’ on the door ... even though it was well past (are we still noticing a theme here??). Unfortunately, I have a small confession on this one ... it was later in the day as we were belting towards Melbourne that I started ruminating on the fact that everywhere we went the clocks were wrong ... spookily always by
half an hour ... and yes, you’ve guessed it, we hadn’t realised there was a time change between SA and Victoria! (If the radio worked for more than 5 minutes every other day, we may have had a fighting chance to work this out earlier!!)
Our penultimate stop of the day was at Beechworth, which I’ve got to say was one of the prettiest towns we’ve been in (and that really is an accolade, because they’ve all be stonking!) One of the locals had been fairly snobby about Beechworth earlier in the day because ‘all those yuppies are moving in’ and although that may be the case, we really thought it was special. We also found yet more Chinese Burning Towers - typical eh, you never see them, and then they’re like buses?!
Our final, and very brief, stop was at Glenrowan. We’d been following Ned Kelly’s footsteps
all day, and couldn’t resist the temptation of stopping to take a photograph of the giant fibre glass statue of the man himself!
We then had a 330Km drive down to Melbourne! The state of the road was the only good thing about the journey - you could certainly eat up the miles. Eventually, after 3 hours of the name game (memories of Christmas markets!) and a bar of chocolate, the city loomed before us as dusk started to fall. Boy it was huge compared to everywhere else we’ve been. It took over an hour to navigate to Jenny and Benny’s, dodging trams and weaving the van through the heavy traffic and the Saturday night crowds. Valerie’s map reading in the fading light was faultless as ever and we eventually arrived unscathed and relatively unruffled!
We were warmly welcomed, treated to a fantastic BBQ, and had a great time chatting into the early hours - and listening to their dog, Hunter, trying to scare the possums out of the garden before they cause any more damage to Benny’s lovely garden. The last time Valerie, Jenny and Benny had met was 1986 so there was a lot of catching
up to do.
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Steve
non-member comment
Ghost Continent!
For goodness sakes, you are making Australia appear to be totally uninhabited by anything other than birds and a few marsupials! You have travelled from WA to Victoria so far and not managed to photograph one single Aussie! Or does your camera have some kind of built in content aware editing? ;^) Steve