Castlemaine and Daylesford

Monday 29^th March 2021

Tonight we sleep in Daylesford, but first we have to get there! Castlemaine is another small town full of heritage buildings, just half an hour or so south of Bendigo. 

Anticline at Castlemaine

 

We have a quick look around and hit a couple of op shops, finding a couple of Fowlers jars. Lunch was a kebab, or souvlaki as they’re called down here. Not bad. We bought it from Blue Sea Fish Shop on Mostyn Street, the first place we’ve noticed butter fish on the menu.

On the edge of town is another op shop, Vinnies, and here I score a lovely red coat for $6. There’s also a second hand shop around the corner which is a real treasure trove.

Check in time at the Airbnb at Daylesford is 2pm, so we plan to be there about then, only another half an hour south of Castlemaine. Road work and dodgy navigation slows our trip but we still only arrive a few minutes late. Jamison Cottage is lovely and we are met by our host Robert. It’s a bit cool, so first chance we get, we switch on the central heating. 

Every Victorian country town worth it's salt has a big fountain! Usually dedicated to Royalty.
 

There’s another treasure trove around the corner, the ‘Daylesford Bazaar’, so we walk around for a look once we’ve unpacked our bags. Find a few more jars.

 

Didn’t do much else as we were booked for a 7 course Japanese degustation dinner at Kadota and wanted a bit of down time. Dinner was amazing, again, just around the corner.

 

 

Gold mine and talking tram

Sunday 28^th March, 2021

Today we have our Central Deborah gold mine tour and tickets for the Talking Tram. We arrive at the mine early enough to have a bit of a look around above ground. 

 

Far from an old gold rush mine, this mine operated from 1939 to 1954 but still managed to extract 929kg of gold, which would be worth about 50 million dollars in today’s money. Not bad! It’s deepest shaft is 412 metres. We went down 61 metres. Bendigo City Council purchased the mine site for $6,000 in 1970 after local lobbying to establish it as a tourist attraction. It has even had a visit from HRH Prince Charles. 

 

Our guide’s name was Baz and he made the tour very interesting without being just a bunch of dry facts. Hard hats and face masks mandatory under ground.

 

The mine is also the first stop for the Tram and we didn’t have long to wait until it arrived. The Chinese have a very long history in Bendigo, the Bendigo Chinese Association being formed in 1871. 

Statue of Shouxing (God of Longevity)

 

They imposed a levy on all Chinese residents to fund costumes and dragons to use in the Bendigo Easter Festival. So it seemed like the Golden Dragon Museum, apparently ‘the Chinese Cultural Centre of Australia’, would be an interesting place to visit. Opened in 1991, the museum houses Loong, the world’s oldest Imperial Dragon, and Dai Gum Loong, the world’s longest Imperial Dragon. It had an amazing collection and it really warranted more time. Bendigo warrants more time. 

 

We walked through a part of Rosalind Garden to get to the Golden Dragon, past a flying fox colony. A huge colony!! The sound wasn’t too bad but the smell!! Phwoar!!!!! 

 

As in all good colonial towns, there is a lovely fountain in the middle of town. 

We scurry back to the Tram stop to catch a ride to the end of the line and back, then head to base, very weary again. Pizza for dinner from ‘It’s Your Pizza’ at Eaglehawk shops, our ‘local’.

 

 

 

Mary Quant and the Jade Buddha

Saturday 27^th March, 2021.

No big rush to get going today, but we still don’t want to waste any time. We’re staying about 5km out of Bendigo and we saw there’s a Vinnies at the local shops, so we head there first. I miss the turn and discover the Recycling shop at the local tip. Didn’t know it was there and not enough towns have them. So much stuff going into landfill, when it could be recycled. There was a Salvos on the way into town as well.

Free parking on Saturdays at the carpark in town, so we parked and headed over to the Tourist Info Centre via Chancery Lane to see if there’s a self guided walking tour. There's art in Chancery Lane. We also talk about our plans for tomorrow and we end up booking the Central Deborah gold mine tour and the Talking Tram, the hop-on, hop-off tram in Bendigo. 

more street art

 

We have tickets for Mary Quant at 1.30pm, so decide to have an early  lunch and go to the Art Gallery to have a look around beforehand. We eat at Oya’s Turkish Kitchen at Fountain Court on High Street. We had a donner kebab and it wsa like none I’ve ever had! The bread was so soft and light, not the usual lebanese bread most other places use.

 

The Bendigo Art Gallery is housed in a heritage building on View Street and is the largest regional art gallery in Australia, probably how they managed to secure the Mary Quant exhibition. There’s a reasonably sized permanent exhibition of art, that we enjoyed looking at until 1.30. This skull greets you at the front door. "Sometimes the dead are more alive than the living" Carved from Wombeyan marble.

 

The Mary Quant exhibition was interesting, and it’s easy to see why, in the day, the fashions caught on with younger women. It was more than clothes though. It encompassed a range of other items, shoes, undergarments, tights and socks, make up, dolls and even a box of men’s ‘colours’ aka make up! I saw the dress that had been the subject of a major restoration on a tv documentary on the establishment of the exhibition.  An orangey colour lace dress with a lining and the iconic daisy motif on the front.

 

When we left the exhibition we climbed the many, many steps to the top on the Poppet Head Lookout, just at the back of the Gallery and were rewarded with a panoramic view over Bendigo. It was quite breezy up there. Rosalind Park is in the middle of Bendigo CBD and is large, green and has the most magnificent trees, planted in the early colonial days and would be worth more time, but unfortunately, I don’t think we have any. 

 

Quick comfort stop and a cold drink at a nearby pub, it’s back to the car and off the see The Great Stupa of Universal Compassion, on Sandhurst Town Road, Myers Flat. This Great Stupa is now home to the Jade Buddha of Universal Peace, the largest gemstone quality jade Buddha in the world, and according to the website ‘The Jade Buddha for Universal Peace is the largest Buddha carved from gemstone quality jade in the world. The size and beauty of the statue make it a wonder of the world. 

 

The Buddha has been carved from a rare boulder of translucent jade (“Polar Pride”) which was discovered in Canada in the year 2000. The Jade Buddha is 2.5 metres high and sits on an alabaster throne of close to 1.6 metres high. The Jade Buddha itself weighs around 4 tonne and is considered to be priceless ………….  The Buddha has been named the Jade Buddha for Universal Peace in the belief that this Buddha will inspire all beings to follow the peaceful path.’  It’s exceptionally beautiful and I’m glad we drove out to find it, even though we got a bit lost on the way back. I’m sure I saw a doco on TV about it and a monk who was there to speak to visitors said there had been a couple of Compass shows documenting the journey of the building of the stupa and Buddhist complex. There’s even a café out there.

 

 

Benalla, Shepparton and on to Bendigo

 

Friday 26^th March. 2021.

Time to move on again, this time we’re headed for Bendigo and travel via Benalla and Shepparton. Between Glenrowan and Benalla, we pass a massive solar panel farm, the biggest we’ve seen except for the one somewhere on the Nullabor. Benalla is a nice town, bigger and busier than Gosford, but that’s not saying much these days, Gosford has been slowly dying for years.

Classy toilet block

Street art is catching on all over, and Benalla is no exception. We noticed an artwork at the end of an alley, and then realised there was art along the alley. The art that attracted us was on the public toilet block, far nicer to look at than the usual brick building. Feeling peckish but not wanting to eat too much close to lunchtime, we share a sausage roll while wandering around.

Not a real lot to see on the road to ‘Shep’, as the locals call it, except farmland. And lots and lots of orchards!! This is the home of SPC Ardmona after all. The road is pretty good and we drive through a few small towns. Shep is a large, sprawling town, or is it a city these days? We couldn’t find a place along the road to eat the lunch that we had packed (finally getting organised), so we ended up in town at Monash Park, site of the Japanese Gardens and Shepparton Moooving Art, 20 fibreglass cows, painted in many different personas. Strawberries and Cream, the Ladybug, Nemo, Iron Man, a pirate, a fish cow, the list goes on! 

 

Learnt the hard way that it’s paid parking in the CBD.

We advised our Airbnb host that we’d arrive in Bendigo around 4pm. Pretty happy that we pulled up at 4.05pm. Our accommodation is very comfy, and much larger than the cabin at Wangaratta. It’s a one bedroom, full bathroom, kitchen and living room apartment, carved off the back of the main house, with private access from the street. There are many period style houses in town and I think this could be one, but it’s not visible from the street. It’s only the features inside that indicate that it’s an older house.

We get unpacked and set about getting tickets for the Mary Quant exhibition that’s on in Bendigo at the moment. It’s on loan from the V&A in London and Bendigo is the only Australian venue, so we’re feeling pleased that we discovered it was on while we’re here. California Gully is the name of the area we’re staying, brings visions of the gold rush days to mind. Down the road is Eaglehawk, and there’s a small shopping centre there. Aldi and IGA, a couple of bottle shops, and lots of food options. We opt for Chinese and there’s lots of it and it’s good. Not points for guessing what’s on the menu for dinner tomorrow as well!

 

Day trip to Bright

 

Thursday March 25^th, 2021.

Leisurely start to the day. On the road by 9.30am for our big loop out to Myrtleford, Bright, Yackandandah, Beechworth and back. Back to base around 5.30, so timed everything pretty well. Stopped off at an historic tobacco kiln which was relocated to a park by the river in Myrtleford and did a slow driveby of the Phoenix Tree, not sure what the story was, but it was impressive. Saw lots of other ‘modern’ kilns, no longer used. 

 

 

The Ovens Valley is so pretty and we drove past many productive farms, with a variety of crops and livestock. Cattle, sheep, hops, berries of all sorts, nuts of all sorts, deer, alpacas and a sign to an emu farm!

Patrick told us about a wine that he’d had and enjoyed, he thought it was from Feather Top winery, but they were closed. Story of this day really. All the ‘good’ shops that we wanted to visit were pretty much only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We’ve been down this path before!! Well, we made the best of it. Found Gum Tree pie shop in Bright and had to try one after Kevin and Anita had raved about them. Justifiably so too! I had the Green Thai Chicken Curry pie and Trevor had the Beef and Red Wine, although he thought the Milawa pie was better. Only just!

 

 

European wasps are a big problem in the area at the moment, thankfully not so much here in Wangaratta. We saw a couple in Bright, but so many more in Yackandandah. Bit scary really. Op shops all done over with precision, a few goodies purchased and charities supported. 

The trees in Bright were starting to change colour, but we were a bit early for the best shows. 

 

We also stopped in at a nut farm and bought some walnuts, still in the shell and saw some trees that we didn't recognise. Turns out they were chestnuts! 

 

In the morning, not far out of Wangaratta, we passed a farm butcher but it was too early in the day to buy meat and cart it around. Fortunately, we passed it again on the way home and they were still open so we bought some lamb cutlets for our dinner. Tarra Tender Cuts and Seafood, 978 Great Alpine Road, Tarrawingee. We’ve just finished eating dinner and they were lovely. $2 per cutlet.