Blog #10

 

Dear Bloggies,

We rolled into Wangaratta mid afternoon on Friday May 3rd and our first stop was going to be the bicycle repair station at the beginning of the Murray to Mountains Rail trail, which was in the centre of town and from my memory of years before had a complete set of chained tools, and also a track pump, which would be much less effort than our little frame fitting bike pump to bring the tyres back up to pressure after a month on the road. We rolled into the repair station to find it had all been vandalised and every single tool have been ripped off, including the end of the track pump. So, the next port of call was the nearby bike shop where I borrowed a track pump before we made our way to Heather's house, a kilometre from the centre of town. There had been signs on the way into town of a diversion brought about by some major works on the railway station and the surrounding bridges, so we thought there might be a complicated diversion to Heather's house on the far side of the tracks but, actually, the work was on a couple of bridges either side of the station. We joined Heather on her patio for a restorative cup of tea in beautiful calm, warm conditions and spent a couple of hours chatting before go into the house and having a shower. 

 

Saturday, 4 May we did all our washing and then walked into town with Heather to have a coffee at the Arts Centre. The weather had deteriorated to cold and threatening rain as we went for a tour around the town to show us the new work that was being done around the area of the railway station. Apparently, a lot of expensive new work needs to be done along with entire track because they intend to send double storey freight trains through on the inland route to Brisbane and the two bridges in the centre of town needed to be heightened. 

We had emailed a week previously and asked Heather to book us in to a restaurant of her choice for the evening and we were going to ‘shout’ her a meal. The restaurant that she had chosen was the King River Cafe, about 15 minutes drive out of Wangaratta and one of our favourite restaurants in the region. We drove there in the early evening and enjoyed an excellent meal washed down with champagne (well, this area has a rich Italian heritage so, actually, Prosecco) to celebrate our arrival. Otto dal Zotto, a vigneron in King Valley was, I understand, the first person in Australia to plant the Prosecco variety of vines in 1999 but just recently the Italian government has been trying to prevent Australians from describing their wine as Prosecco, just as the French get very protective of the term ‘champagne’. The matter is still being decided by the courts and the Australians contend that the grape variety is called Prosecco, rather than it describing the region of origin. It will make a huge difference to the sales of this wine worldwide if the decision goes against the Australian producers.
On Sunday, Heather was away all day on Rotary business, running a barbecue outside Bunnings megastore and we had arranged to meet up with some retired anaesthetists from Wangaratta at Bailey’s winery, near Glenrowan. Eight of us went there to enjoy a fabulous afternoon in the sunny garden at the back of the vineyard, drinking their wine, eating a pizza and catching up on news.
Roger, who is about the same age as us, recounted his experience of being bitten repeatedly by a redback spider, which had found its way into his gardening glove (just checked Mr Google and last redback spider death in Oz was in 1955). He rapidly became very ill and was taken to the local Wangaratta hospital in extreme pain. There the doctors misinterpreted his symptoms (pale, sweaty, tachycardic and with pain down his arm) as being mostly cardiac and would not listen to his plea for antivenene, preferring instead to send him down to ICU in Melbourne. A very unpleasant experience for him and one which prompted some discussion and general agreement that if you keep your gardening gloves in the shed you should stomp on them before you put your hands inside.

 

The vineyard was at the back of Glenrowan in the hills of the Warby Range where they have such wonderfully evocative names as Mount Cobbler, Mount Buggery and Mount Despair, although it was all very attractive to us and an area that we had never seen before. 

On Monday morning Joyce and I had an appointment with Jordan, a journalist from the Wangaratta Chronicle who was to interview and photograph us (dressed in our Lycra and wearing our ‘End Polio Now’ tee shirts) for an article in the local paper. Jordan, in her early twenties, was very attentive and very respectful but clearly had no idea what polio was. I hope we put her straight! All good publicity but, judging by the donations into the polio donation portal, not enough to prompt any donations. 

Many of you would remember that prior to our previous trip across the Nullarbor we sent begging letters to almost everybody we had ever met and in our lives and that resulted in some very generous donations. But, this time around, we felt that we couldn't repeat it, otherwise we would probably lose all our friends and we decided on a different strategy. In our presentation to the Rotary clubs we have tried to get everybody in the audience to tap their social media contacts on the shoulder and ask them to donate a small amount of money, $6, the cost of a cup of coffee, under the banner of ‘hit polio for six’. I think we have to concede that this has not been successful. Looks like it was just a pipe dream to imagine that the 30,000 Australian Rotarians would each tap ten of their their social media contacts on the shoulder and ask them for six dollars. Pity! Even more of a pity when you consider that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributes two dollars for every dollar raised by Rotary. 

Heather took us for a bit of sightseeing on Monday afternoon and we drove out to the Winton Wetlands and Lake Mokoan for lunch and a walk. It was an area that we had seen signposted from the Hume Highway, but we had never visited. It appeared that wetlands had been flooded into a lake many years ago and a sailing club had been built but, after much discussion with traditional owners and environmentalists, the lake was drained and the area reverted to wetlands, leaving the sailing club high and dry. It was a beautiful warm, sunny afternoon and we ate lunch on the patio of the interpretation centre then strolled through the grounds, taking note of the warnings about snakes in the area. (Where there’s water, there are frogs, where there are frogs, there are snakes) 

In the evening, we had another of our Rotary presentations, this time to the three Rotary clubs in Wangaratta, who all joined to listen to our appeal and responded generously. On our table was the president of the Wangaratta club, David Ward, who told us that he was in charge of signalling on the new railway development in the city and explained to us the purpose of all the works we had seen - trying to double freight capacity up to Queensland and get trucks off the roads.
On Tuesday, Heather had some more Rotary and family business down in Melbourne and drove off early to spend the whole day down there whilst we just pottered about and did some ‘housekeeping’, related to the ride, which is so difficult to do when we are on the move. We had arrived in Wangaratta on Friday feeling exhausted and, with Heather’s quiet, calm support (and a spell of near perfect weather) had recharged ready for the next 1000km.