Day Trippers
On maybe the third day of lockdown here back in March Dim decided that it was finally time to exchange her NSW driving licence for a VIC one so that she could drive here and after calling up their Melbourne office swiftly left the house as they were closing that afternoon. Dim hasn’t been in to the city since, but we have now had the chance to get out of it.
I’ve complained before that the transport infrastructure in Australia is dreadful and sadly it ultimately meant that a lot of my unemployment time was wasted. So much of this country is inaccessible if you do not have a car. Where we are requires a train journey of several hours to get near to one of the popular national parks, but there’s no bus when you get off the train. You have to walk.
During lockdown we had planned a cross-country road journey to her parents in Urunga that would be quite the mission. We even got to the point where I planned stops along the way, taking in curios and short hikes. As lockdown wore on it became obvious that we weren’t going to be taking the journey any time soon, not only because of the border closures, but also for fear of spreading the virus to Dim’s parents.
Then one Monday Dim declared that she was taking Friday off, renting a car and driving us somewhere. I was tasked with plotting where we went.
TRIP ONE — Mornington Peninsula
Dim is a creature of the sea, so it only seemed fair that as she was driving she got to go to the sea. She had mentioned going to Arthur’s Seat, so that was the first stop and the rest of the trip was planned around that. So bright and early that cold Friday morning we headed about a kilometer down Sydney Road to the car rental place and Dim completed the paperwork. There had been a fair bitof anxiety leading up to this moment, but Dim got in the driver’s seat and we pulled away, briefly down Sydney Road and then through the vast suburbs as we headed East and then South.
I won’t go in to it here, but any accusations that Dim is not a good driver are unfounded. Sure, there were a few cases of whiplash in the first few minutes as she adjusted to how sensitive the brake is, but otherwise everything was handled calmly and correctly. Before we hit the freeway we pulled over and I got the car hooked up to my phone so we could have some music for the longer drive and then we were off.
Much like any lengthy drive it was barely worth detailing. Some time later we arrived at Arthur’s Seat. I was still concerned about my foot at the time, so rather than walk from the bottom we drove to the top, parked up and strolled around the gardens for 45 minutes or so. There is a gondola that goes from top to bottom that was closed due to lockdown but there were a fair few people pulling up to admire the views there. While a cold morning, we had been lucky with the weather as the sun emerged on our way to the top.
We quickly found a large cairn, named after Matthew Flinders, the first Westerner to scale the ‘mountain’ and survey the surrounding area from the top. The street from which Flinders Street Station takes its name is also named in his honour. The Seawind gardens were pleasant enough and there is a duckpond in the middle that had some picnicking families dotted around. There are apparently kangeroos in the area, but we had to settle for a kookaburra in their absence.
Once we were back at the car I presented Dim with a couple of choices about where to go next. It was decided that we would head West and see what the town named Sorento had to offer. Heading West took us in to the headland the juts out below the peninsula, almost joining the opposite side and creating the natural harbour that Melbourne sits above. Sorento is the location of the East ferry terminal, the other being in Queenscliff across the water to the West.
Sorento reminded me of a small well-to-do English coastal town that has one main strip with trendy cafes and gelato houses leading down to the beach. The waters here of course were much bluer. I reminded Dim of her obligation to dip her feet in every body of water that she comes across and once she got her shoes back one we headed out on to the pier beside the ferry and admired the bay.
It was now lunchtime, but Sorento was surprisingly lacking in fish and chip shops (that were open), rather undoing my English coastal town comparison. Dim, however, was able to secure a vegan gelato (we were in Sorento, after all). I was keen to push on West, to the end of the road and have a mooch around the old fortifications at Point Neapan, constructed as defence for Melbourne from any maritime forces. We passed through Portsea on the way, which is about as wealthy as anything we have seen here.
We parked up at the end of the road and contemplated doing a longer walk to the end of the headland. Time was against us, and if we were to stop for chips somewhere and drive back to the rental place before 5pm we could only afford about 45 minutes. If we had have undertaken the longer walk around Point Neapen we would have walked along Cheviot Beach, which is famous for being the location where Harold Holt — Australian Prime Minister at the time — disappeared in 1967.
We settled for a short walk out to the water instead. The terrain here was much sandier and the scrubland was dry and barren. The beach itself was more desolate and moody than just down the coast at Sorento. Once back at the car we had a peek in the old military building that we had parked next to. It was filled with various bits of military memorabilia that may have been connected to its past, including a nifty poster featuring a kangaroo urging Australian men to sign up to the war effort.
We started making our way back along the coast to the freeway but stopped off first in the coastal town of Rye (wherever did they get that name from?) for some chips. We ordered a minimum chips, which is a Victorian thing and means the minimum amount of chips that a chip shop will make you. Despite the name, they were plentiful in number, although the quality varied through the bag.
We had given ourselves just over two hours to get back to the rental place in time for 5pm but we ran in to some roadworks part way along and then heavy traffic as we got in to the city. I called up and we were granted some extra time, so once we had topped the car up at a petrol station we dropped it off only a few minutes late and were on our merry way home. We both enjoyed the day and the freedom granted by the car so much that we resolved to do it again in the near future.
TRIP TWO — Bendigo
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The near future came around a lot quicker than we were expecting. On the Monday morning I received the call telling me that I had been offered a job and that they would like me to start in two weeks time. We had been discussing going away for a night somewhere and decided to do it before I started the job rather than a few weeks in. In hindsight this turned out to be a smart move as Melbourne headed back in to second lockdown.
We quickly settled on heading to Bendigo at the weekend, leaving on the Saturday morning, staying in Bendigo that night and heading back on the Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t hard to find a reasonably priced hotel, although it seemed that many had lowered their prices to tempt the city types in to the country. Bendigo is only about a 90 minute drive from our house, so in advance I plotted out places to stop off on the way up and down. We had been hoping to go to the Hanging Rock National Park but it had been closed due to lockdown and remained that way.
Mt Macedon was our alternative first stop. The large car parks were busy on arrival and there were plenty of families knocking about. We managed to get to one of the lookouts when there was no one else there, but otherwise it seemed very popular. We weren’t that sure why though. It was yet another location that one drives to the top of, takes a picture and leaves. We tried to elongate our stay by following a path, but we found out after five minutes that it took you all the way down the hill and wasn’t a loop. We followed a different path along the crest of the ridge instead, but that too wasn’t a loop. I took us a cross-country route on the way back to the car and at some point disturbed two small marsupials just a meter or so to my right. I didn’t get a good look but Dim was fairly certain that they were wallabies.
Our next stop was a short way up the motorway at Mt Alexander National Park. We noticed that we had clearly entered wine country as the roads were lined with vineyards and every other kilometer we seemed to be passing wineries that in normal times would offer tastings and tours.
We worked our way in to the hills and parked up near the summit. Although not particularly high, there was low-hanging cloud that drifted around us. An impressively large television mast sits atop the summit and as we walked past we could only see a few levels up. We sat down for a spot of lunch on some rocks and the cloud cleared, allowing us a better view.
We headed on and found a different lookout that actually required a bit of hands on shimmying down to get to. We were much more impressed with this one than Mt Macedon. I tried to get a picture of both of us by propping my camera up on one of the rocks, but it came out a blurry and sideways.
Our next stop was a bit of a d-tour to get to and annoyingly for Dim featured a long dirt track out of the National Park. The rental agreement said not to do any uncovered roads, so I wasn’t terribly popular as one thousand stones popped and cracked against the underside of the chassis for the five or so minutes that we travelled at 10kmph or less. A while later I spotted a family of kangaroos as we zoomed past and Dim was further annoyed that she didn’t see them because her eyes were on the road.
Our final stop was just outside the town of Heathcote for a 3km loop to ‘Viewing Rock’. Part of the route stopped off at some ‘Devil Caves’ that was just a hollowed out rock and wasn’t even worth getting a picture of. The walk itself was a fairly pleasant short bush walk, the peak of which was the Viewing Rock. It was besieged by children on our arrival but they kindly relinquished their boulder-some throne to allow us to mount.
Everywhere North of Macedon is basically goldrush territory in Victoria and in different times we may have gone to some of the show mines for a tour. On our way back to the car from the viewing rock we came across an old gunpowder building, where Heathcote miners stored their explosives away from the town. There were also some old and rusting machines that looked well past their use-by date.
Once we were back in the car we were on the final stretch of the journey to Bendigo. Along the way I suggested nipping in to a supermarket to pick up some supplies but was told no, let’s get to the hotel. We got to the hotel, which was pleasant enough and was then asked where the nearest off licence was. Dim didn’t fancy driving any more once we had checked in. A 20 minute walk away I say. Why didn’t you make us stop on the way here then…
Our 45 minute round trip to the offy could have been worse. It wasn’t raining and we at least got to see some of Bendigo Creek. That might sound exciting, but the stretch we saw was basically an open storm relief drain with a small trickle in the middle of the concrete. Normally when away we would sample the local wares in a variety of establishments, but unfortunately for us the pubs were not to open for another two days.
I had made a booking at one of the Indian restaurants in town, so after a couple of drinks at the hotel we made our way in. The way in was basically straight down a main road for 20 minutes and soon enough we had arrived. Once we were sat down, we waited 25 minutes to be handed menus. The only other patrons had left shortly after we had arrived, so the restaurant wasn’t exactly rushed off of its feet. Bland food was then rushed out and the cherry on top was that it was raining when we left. It was reasonably hard rain, although we didn’t let it stop us from getting a picture of Dim with The Big Lotus Flower. We watched a film when we got back to the hotel and then had a kip.
Sunday started off with some strolling around Bendigo, as aside from our brisk walks to and from the offy and Indian we hadn’t seen much of it. Turns out there wasn’t really that much to see anyway. Dim became slightly obsessed with the plethora of aged second-story balconies that adorned many of the buildings. We headed in to the main park, where we were a bit confused by the piercing noise. It turned out to be a significant number of roosting bats (dubbed ‘flying foxes’ here) that were in most of the trees there.
We headed on through the park and spotted a headstock on top of a short hill. The headstock was of course a remnant of the gold mining days that the town is famous for, but without any of the mining attractions (or heritage tramline) open we had to stay fairly uneducated on that front. A staircase was kindly provided for the headstock so we made our way to the top for our snaps of what turned out to be a fairly uninspiring view.
From there we made our way back across the park to the Bendigo Chinese Museum. The Museum was estabished to recognise the significant Chinese community that moved to Australia during the goldrush and the contribution to society that they had made since then. We didn’t go in to the Museum itself but we were able to stroll around the ornamental garden next door. The focus of the day then became finding Dim some breakfast. It proved trickier than we had hoped with many places remaining shut. Eventually we found somewhere and after an aeon of waiting, Dim was finally able to have some breakf — oh no wait, no she didn’t, we waited all that time for her to get a coffee and went to Bakers Delight instead (Aussie Greggs).
On our way out of Bendigo we stopped off at something I had noticed on the map the day before — Kennington Reservoir. The suburb appears to be the only Kennington in Australia, and according to this non-referenced page it was ‘named Kennington, possibly after Kennington, near Canterbury, England’. The sun had come out and the reservoir made for a very pleasant stroll. There were some colourful birds that I tried and failed to get pictures of, with my best effort completely out of focus, below.
[Aside: I have just challenged Dim to think of places that we have been to where we have been to the original English version and the Australian cover version. The rules are that you have to have at least got off of the train, which rules out Preston and Canterbury. So far we have Kennington, Rye and South Wales.]
From Kennington we left Bendigo and began our journey home. While the ride up had been devoted to stopping off for walks, the way back down was devoted to stopping off for things to look at. Our first stop was the Castlemaine Botanical Gardens, but they turned out to be completely unremarkable. Basically just a cold park with a public toilet (this information is important for later) and no signs of XXXX anywhere.
On we pushed into more rural Victoria as I derailed our journey in search of some big things. But not just any big things. First up were The Big Cricket Bats in Shepherds Flat. Annoyingly the little shop wasn’t open to explain exactly why Shepherds Flat is the home of Aussie cricket-bat-making, but it was certainly a very nice part of the world. The main road ran above the river, along the winding valley and thankfully for Dim there was no dirt track.
Continuing a short way South we headed in to Daylesford, home of one of Australia’s The Big Golf Balls. This one sits, slightly sadly and discoloured, between a crazy golf course and an old people’s home. The residents may well have been confused as to what I was up to. Daylesford itself was rather posh and the region seems to pride itself on its fancy-pancy natural springs or something. We had a quick stroll around the center and were a bit surprised that despite it being past lunch, each of the boutique bakeries had queues out of their doors. We didn’t stay long.
Instead we drove slightly back on ourselves to get to Malmsbury (spelled differently to the UK Malmesbury). We had seen the sign for Malmsbury on the motorway on Saturday and it seemed to tick a lot of our boxes — ‘historic’ village, botanical gardens and railway viaduct. The countryside we drove through on the way was more English than other parts of Australia, with gradual rolling hills and arable fields.
We parked up in Malmesbury near the viaduct and panic set in as I got out of the car. ‘B*LL*CKS I’ve left my f*cking camera in that f*cking toilet in Castlemaine.’ (That isn’t what it sounds like, I promise.) I should have been used to the look on Dim’s face as this has happened no less than three times on previous holidays. This time I couldn’t just run back to the Greek Taverna or ask at the desk in the NZ hostel. I came to the conclusion that as it had been about two hours, the camera would have been taken from the toilet already as I fruitlessly searched the car, not daring to ask Dim to drive us all the way back. Then I found it in my bag.
We headed around the corner to look at the viaduct and just as I was taking a photo we heard a familiar horn. We had luckily timed it right to see a train go over, much to the excitement of the small kiddies nearby. The viaduct itself is old, having been built when the trainline was first put in in 1860 — so quite old for something madmade here. We went down to the stream below then headed back to the village center. There really isn’t much there, but we got Dim an ice cream and me a bottle of pop in the dinky village shop before taking a stroll around the gardens. The gardens were definitely better than Castlemaine, although they were very waterlogged.
We got back in the car and I fired up the playlist for our final stretch home. We ended up seeing quite a lot in the short drive up to Bendigo, some of it more worthwhile than others. We had been discussing the feasibility of buying a car versus renting one and the freedom granted that weekend led us to resolve that we would do at least one weekend away a month to do and see more. That resolution, of course, proved to be quite damned.
