Tourist gold in Bendigo

 We are back on the magic interweb at Bendigo, it being a major town/city, and we are back into the tourist areas. After Mt.Gambier we left South Australia to enter Victoria and we noticed that almost straight away the landscape changed from flat and gravelly to rather lush and the timber plantations are of eucalypt rather than pinus radiata. The roads changed too, from corrugated to smooth but with lots of potholes.
The first Victorian town was Dartmoor, where the main street had its street trees (?Atlantic Cedars), declared unsafe, so they were lopped. A chainsaw artist then carved figures in the stumps. These figures represent (as did the trees) the men and women of the area who served during WW1 & WW11.

Across the river there are morre carvings, one particular multi branched tree has lots of nursery rhyme characters carved; we spotted Snow White and the Dwarves, Hickory Dickory Dock, The Three Bears, The Cat and the Fiddle (and the Cow jumping over the moon) to name a few.

Then we headed north over rolling heads, beautiful lush pastures, 'fat lambs and cattle country', and a vast array of parrots.  It was very, very windy and the clouds were getting darker so when we got to Coleraine we decided to hunker down in the little caravan park and sit out the storm.
The storm didn't eventuate but we had a nice time looking around the town the next morning, there was an op  shop, a secondhand bookshop, and the local Christmas Fete to raise funds for the local hospital. It was nice to see wooden buildings after SAs stone and fibro buildings.

Then it was onto a little township of Harrow, a hidden gem! 

There are 2 museums in Harrow, a motor museum and the Johnny Mullagh museum.

The Johnny Mullagh museum was very interesting and although Michael knew the story I was only half aware that the very first Aussie cricket team to tour UK was an aboriginal team; one of the best players was Johnny Mullagh and he was a Harrow local, is in fact buried in Harrow cemetery. 

The transport museum was a surprise because......

Yes. a Citroen 5 CV.

There was also a Clement-Bayard, an FN, and a couple of Singers. All very sweet and it was only $3 each.

We were tempted to linger, but pressed on through 'Little Desert National Park'. (It's Desert in name only, very like the scrub just north of Lancelin, WA). There are only 2 sealed roads through the park, there are lots of 4WD tracks; one of these, a particularly small, sandy one was officially signposted as 'The McDonald Hwy' . This took us up to the town of Nhill, pronounced NIL and that was its attraction for us so we pressed on to Dimboola. There wasn't a wedding/fight or a fight/wedding, in fact there wasn't much of anything, but we spent the night there and can now say, been there, done that!

The next day it was on through backroads, broadacre farms without any visible livestock through towns of Minyip and Donald into Wychproof, 'where the railway runs through the middle of the main street'. Yes, the track does but the train doesn't run anymore. We then followed the Calder Hwy to Bendigo, staying overnight at the HardHill Tourist Reserve in Wedderburn before going into Bendigo. In all this time on the

 road we have seen very few other motorhomes, maybe they all went to the rally in Kalgoorlie and are now back home. There are some caravans and they DO wave to us.

Now we are in Bendigo and have had a good day playing tourist, riding on the tram and visiting the Joss House Temple.

The Chinese Joss House Temple was fascinating, a really interesting place, at which we both learnt a few things. There are few Chinese in Bendigo now, some people come from Melbourne to worship. This keeps the Joss House alive and is important for the ancestors.

                                                                                 

The photo on left is in the main room of the temple, it is the altar to General Guan-Di, the god of war and prosperity.  The photo on the right is the altar to Confucius.

Next tourist stop will be Ballarat in a couple of days. Watch this space.