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Published: December 12th 2011
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Blog 22 - Bendigo and Macedon Feeling somewhat stunned and upset about our "retrenchment" from Bright Holiday Park, we departed in the early hours of Saturday 19th November, and set off towards Bendigo, as we were planning to go there for the Caravan Show this weekend anyway.
As we had breakfast in a rest area on the side of the freeway, we drove straight through Shepparton. Peter was ready for another break from driving as we approached the little town of Stanhope so we helped the small local economy by purchasing coffee and newspapers. A young boy was sweeping the footpath outside the butcher’s shop and asked if that was our van up the road. He was impressed by the way we tow the car behind. Peter reminisced about his youth in a country town. Every time something big or different came into town, everyone was curious and all the kids came out to “oogle” at it.
Bendigo greeted us with rain so we hoped that the weather forecast was correct. Warm and sunny for Sunday. We planned our visit to the Caravan Show for Sunday. Apparently Friday's weather has terribly hot (like 43 degrees Celsius). We did choose
the right day to go, and it was only about 18 degrees and a cool breeze.
Arthur and Margaret are a couple of "Grey Nomads" who have the contract to attend caravan shows around the country promoting "Caravan and Motorhome” magazine. Wendy often stops to have a chat with them, always on the lookout for interesting job opportunities.
Peter wanted to get the TV aerial on the van fixed, so we moved to another park after that was completed. Lo and behold! Our site was right next door to Arthur and Margaret. Unfortunately for us, it was their last evening there and they were going out for dinner, so we didn't get the chance to have a really good chin-wag.
At the show we were asking around for job opportunities and were told that one of the parks in town was looking for someone to work for them. The manager at the park we were staying also found out about the opportunity and advised us accordingly. We rocked up with our resume, only to be greeted by the wife of the partnership not knowing anything about a position. Apparently they had just lost their assistant managers on
Another Beechworth Bakery
We had to visit Echuca's "Beechworth Bakery" short notice, so we left it in their hands to consider our CV after their shock that we had turned up apparently out of nowhere. A few days later they told us they were planning to put their son and daughter into the position. Damn!
We visited a site of one of the many gold-mining sites around the area and spent an interesting hour wandering around, reading the story boards and trying to imagine the noise from the crushing machines and how there could be so many people fossicking for gold in those days.
As we were only an hour's drive from Echuca we made a day of visiting that busy, touristy centre. Yay! Another Beechworth Bakery! Obviously, a sojourn up the Murray River on a paddle steamer was high on the list of things to do. We boarded the PS Pevensey for a 1 hour cruise. The PS Pevensey was built in 1911 and was named after a property on the Murrumbidgee River. It was lovely to see the river actually flowing. Last time we came through this way, the paddle steamers could not operate due to lack of water in the river. Seeing little paddle steamers
PS Pevensey
Built 100 years ago tied up to private jetties along the way was quaint, and the number of rental and private house-boats and party boats made us wonder how congested the river must be during holiday times.
Cherry season lasts for 100 days so when in cherry country during harvest time, we were not going to miss out. We followed the signs to the shed door and bought THE most delicious fat juicy cherries we have ever tasted.
The next day we wanted to move over to the showground to be on site for the weekly Bendigo Markets. On arrival it was obvious that we would not be able to stay due to the Hot Rod Show being held there. Great! They’re following us around the country! Victorians seem to love their hot rods. We spent the night at the park where we applied for the job. That’s 3 parks in the one week in the one town. It rained all day so we were questioning if the market would actually happen. The weather was fine on Sunday morning and turned out quite a pleasant day. The market wasn’t all that great; add the noise and smell of and burning rubber and
So many boats
Imagine the congestion during holiday times oil from the hot rods and all-in-all we wished we hadn’t bothered.
We departed Bendigo that afternoon and headed for Macedon; an hour north of Melbourne. The plan was to visit Mel, Gareth and Maya who were staying in Melbourne for a wedding. We had a special package from Beechworth Bakery’s Bendigo store for each of them. We’ll explain our fascination for this bakery at another time.
Because we had arranged a later check out from the Bendigo Caravan Park and after the market time was getting on, we decided to use all our very efficient packing up skills and get moving as soon as we could. Wendy worked on the inside and Peter worked on the outside (as usual). Peter even coupled up the car by himself and was doing really well when Wendy called him for a coffee. Well, that was a mistake; as we forgot to cross check each other on the coupling set up for the car.
When we arrived in Macedon Caravan Park we couldn’t get the car into reverse, and the grief slowly emerged as to what had happened. We had towed the car in reverse gear, and on an automatic transmission that isn’t good. In fact the transmission was “stuffed”.
The interesting thing about this short journey and our newly revealed challenge is that along the way we decided to pick up from where we had left off on the Harry Potter audio books. If you don’t already know, we were listening to Harry Potter when we blew our first tyre, and the second, and the air conditioning blow out several months back. This time Peter said we had gone through that “dark” period and it would be OK. In fact as we drove along this time he was thinking how nice it was not to have any problems. Well, the damage had already been done. Now we had to find a way of fixing the transmission without driving the car anywhere and where the nearest workshop was 45 minutes to an hour from where we had booked in for 4 days. That also meant we didn’t have a car to even get to the shops.
Needless to say Mel, Gareth Maya had to come visit us…………….
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Ann
non-member comment
hope your luck improves!
hi Wendy & Peter Better leave the Harry Potter for when you are stationery! Where will you be for Christmas? All the best. Ann