Post #4 - Victoria's Coast
It is now Friday, 12 April and this was always planned to be a rest day, but during the morning we had interviews with two journalists from local newspapers, which took most of the morning and then Jenny showed us around their property. She has a number of large aviaries housing hundreds of mainly finches, including about 30 beautiful Gouldian finches. She also has a few ducks that have come from their duck farm because some of the white Peking ducks that they breed for the table have little flecks of black in them and these are unacceptable both for the feathers and for the meat. Jenny just looks after them on their property in town until they die of old age.
She also propagates orchids, has the most elaborate craft room and, during the busy cropping season, will often help out driving a header, which looks about as straightforward as flying a jumbo.
She gives craft lessons in the big craft room to groups of women and, as if all this is not enough, she catered for over thirty Rotarians at our meeting without any signs of stress. A remarkable woman.
On Saturday we had to return to Hamilton and Joyce still wasn’t feeling very well so we got a lift of about 50km to Cherrypool - place with neither cherries nor a pool - 80km from Hamilton.
The road was mostly good and there were far less trucks than we anticipated, probably because of the weekend. The big trucks carry grain from the north of the state down to the deep water port at Portland. The southbound carriageway of the road, was badly deformed because southbound trucks, full of grain, are very heavy, whilst northbound trucks are empty. There’s significant grain spillage during the season and that grain falls to the side of the road where the birds eat it, gorging on it until they have difficulty getting airborne. Hence frequent bird strikes.
This road is lined with beautiful red gums and when we got to the little village of Cavendish we found an annual red gum festival in progress. Cavendish looks like it’s probably got a population of about 500 but I estimate there would have been a 1000 cars parked in paddocks around the village to attend the festival. We stopped there for a coffee and as we left an elderly lady with a poodle and a wheelie walker got talking to us as to what we were doing. Hearing our story she immediately opened her wallet and gave us $10 and explained that she’s on the pension and couldn’t afford any more. I was really touched- the widow’s mite.
When we arrived back in Hamilton our motel reception told us there was a major art exhibition in town with artworks never previously shown anywhere in Australia.
Why Hamilton? The receptionist told us that the exhibition was open until 5 o’clock and was only one block away from the motel, so, FOMO, we quickly had a shower and went out, but we couldn’t find the gallery. Checking the internet for ourselves we discovered that on Saturdays the exhibition actually closed at 2 o’clock. Doh! That left us downtown in late afternoon - too early to eat but late for walking back to the motel and then returning for a meal (we were seriously hungry). The solution was a wine and here we came across a couple of locals in Edwardian dress up outfits. The man looked like a young version of Poirot and his female friend, all in black, introduced herself as Bond, Julie Bond. It turned out that Julie Bond was actually the deputy mayor of Hamilton and they were on their way to a murder mystery night.
Sunday April 14th 86 km to Portland. It was cold and windless and before we left Hamilton, we went for breakfast at the Speckled Frog cafe, which was busy serving hearty breakfasts to about thirty Firies about to start lighting what used to be called controlled burns. Now, after some regrettable incidents they are known as planned burns to reduce fuel load before the upcoming fire season. The firemen (and women) were all from the Yarra area, so were miles from their home base. We spoke very briefly with them to be sure that their ‘controlled’ burn was not going to rage out of control anywhere near us.
Heywood en route to Portland. Wood, wine and roses- not a traditional combo
The day was chilly and windless, the traffic was light, the terrain was flat and the road and shoulder were good. The red gums had given way to very well maintained blue gum plantations that were destined to feed the chip and timber mills in Portland. All in all, not very interesting so our minds wandered as we noted that our comfortable speed was 22kph and worked out that top marathon runners could have kept pace with us. Impressive.
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| We think this was a letterbox. The postman wore a Kevlar jacket. |
As we rolled into Portland, we got a panoramic view of the deepwater Harbour with all its facilities for grain storage, woodchip mounds and timber stacks and with large ships moored miles offshore waiting to load. It’s an attractive town which claims to be the birthplace of Victoria, as it was the first place to be settled in back in the early 1800s. It was settled mainly as a pastoral area by a Tasmanian by the name of Henty. Whaling was also a feature of the early settlement and whale watching from the headlands, is still a major feature of tourism in the area. We had to cycle through the town, along the foreshore, to reach our motel, a rather dingy and depressing accommodation, but the evening meal at the adjacent pub was pretty good. Once set up in the motel, we phoned our hosts for Monday and they invited us to come round and say hello and they also offered to do our washing. And that was before they had stood downwind of us - very thoughtful! We introduced ourselves to Naomi and John and their guests for the afternoon - a young Sri Lankan couple new into town. They had come round to share some special Sri Lankan dishes prepared for the Sri Lankan New Year. Who knew that Sri Lankans celebrate New Year in mid April?
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| Whales appear just offshore and even in the harbour in Portland |
Back at the motel, the priority for us was to catch up on all the unanswered emails and phone calls and general housekeeping issues, which are always on hold when on the move and appearing at Rotary evening meetings.
Phil
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