Jetty Tour Day 28 - Morgan (SA) to Gol Gol via Mildura (Vic)

Three states in a day!

Dust storm coming at Ned's Corner

Easily achieved as it turns out as we left South Australia right beside the north west corner of Victoria, via the Sturt Highway. For all intents and purposes, we are staying at Mildura but not in Mildura, as we crossed the Murray River to spend the night in a nice park at Gol Gol. If no border existed, it would be a suburb of Mildura.

Two stops on the way east.

At Renmark, we had a coffee at the Renmark Club, on the decking almost in the Murray River. Nice spot and friendly people but my mocha wasn't hot enough and the toilets were disappointing for such a swank club. Sue shot some footage of a big houseboat coming into dock and we took some photos for the travelers who climbed onto the dock.

Heading toward and over the boarder, we thought it would be a relatively easy thing to find a roadside stop to pop the top and have lunch. Not so. There were none and it wasn't until the fruit bins - fruit and vegetables from outside the Mildura region are banned - that we could pull in. We ended up having lunch in a farmers paddock. It was blowing all around us! Getting the van shut again proved a challenge, as by the wind propelling dust south to the Great Ocean Road, was beyond strong. To be safe, I had to drive the van - with all its panel up - into a position so the northern gale was coming over the back of the van. The back panel was the trickiest as once it was released it came down in a big hurry, Sue saving my bonce.

The rest of the trip was spent in and out of clouds of red dirt blasting across the road. Some poor

Click camera for today's photos

bugger was losing his top soil.

Shopping, refuel and home for tea.

Two big days ahead of us to get to Dubbo and a day off.

If you want a map of today's travel: on a mobile platform, scroll on the bar at the bottom of the page; on a laptop or desktop, click on the tab.

Days 21 & 22 - Mildura

PS Melbourne at Port of Mildura dock

Day 21

A long chat with new acquaintances Ziggy and Heather this morning which led to an interesting moment. After finding out I had bipolar, Ziggy highly recommended an episode of Conversations, with Richard Fidler, they had listened to, only a few days ago, as it was all about someone's struggle with managing bipolar.

Imagine his surprise to find out he was talking to that someone! (Conversations with Richard Filder)

Not feeling at my best owing to an increase recently in medication, our day was a little limited but still enjoyable.

We went first to Lock 11 and had lunch in a lovely park beside the Lock. A Whistling Kite sat high up in a Red Gum, looking for food and then took to the air, calling as though lonely in its pursuits.

Driving back along Hugh King Drive, we were in time to watch a paddle steamer arrive and disgorge it's lunch time crowd and were disappointed at not being able to book an evening cruise. Numbers drop dramatically in this post school holiday week.

Not far away we found the Mildura Arts Centre which currently houses a very attractive sculpture exhibition.

Rio Vista House

Attached to it in a rather unusual marriage, is Rio Vista, the original home of William Chaffey, one of the Chaffey brothers who establish Mildura. Its a Queen Anne style building with internal staircases leading off in all directions giving a multi-layered affect. Original tiles and wallpapers are in dark and sombre hues, in keeping with the deep red wood furnishing and staircases. Its not until you reach the upstairs bedrooms that light comes into the house and balconies from these rooms look over the Murray only a few hundred metres away. An interesting feature is a room in the basement, designed for entertaining and with a sprung floor for dancing. The springs have long since given way and the floor is now convex along the short sides, such that you walk uphill to the middle of the room and down hill to the other side.

We did some shopping which was limited by our inability to carry fruit and vegetables into South Australia but by this time I was feeling to unwell to do much else, so we returned to camp and had a nice evening with Ziggy and Heather, talking about life and our part in it. Ziggy is a fascinating fellow. He came to Australia from Poland before the age of three and owing to one of those silly family fallings out, he lost touch with his family back in the home country. It wasn't until recently that he has been able to reunite with cousins and second cousins who he didn't even know he had. It's an extraordinary tale, quite apart from the life he and Heather have made for themselves.

Sometimes you just get lucky with who you meet.

Day 22

We wandered into town - eventually - with Sue heading to the shops to by presents and browse, whilst I went to the library for the free wi-fi  and updating this journal.

A couple of hours later ... I met Sue at a cafe and she showed me all the specials she had found and little presents she bought me from the second hand bookshop. We did some forward planning, booking the Kangaroo Island leg of our journey and then went looking for a few more items. Sue took me back to the bookshop - Boomerang Book Exchange - where the cheerful Jenny made us feel right at home. Earlier, when Sue had gone to purchase some books, Jenny had apologised to Sue for not being able to offer Eftpos facilities because the bank had not delivered on a promise to deliver a replacement machine. Sue, being Sue, went to the bank and made a polite fuss (as in James Bond, nobody does it better) and on our return, an hour or so later, the new machine had arrived and was up and running!

This was one of the better second hand bookshops I have visited, with clear organisation of sections - something sadly lacking in most - and quality stock. We each picked up a few happy bargains.

We returned back to Lock 11, with it's well cared for park and displays explaining the ecology and machinations of weirs and locks on the Murray River. We were in luck, as a paddle steamer appeared, heading back upstream, so we were able to witness the operation of the lock. As luck would have it, the public address system on the paddle steamer we watched go through the lock was loud enough so that we received all the information those paying customers on board listen to. Most helpful.

When Alfred Deakin went to California in 1884 on a fact finding mission as the Victorian Minister for Public Works, he was able to attract American brothers, William and George Chaffey to Australia to sate his passion for irrigation. The brothers were given large land grants in the Mildura area in return for a guarantee of three hundred thousand pound investment in developing irrigation for the Murray. Using a system of weirs and locks, they were able to regulate the flow of the river to maintain a constant supply to agricultural endeavour, instead of the boom/bust nature of any river's normal flow. Within twelve months, the town, later city of Mildura was underway, with an initial five hundred residents. The rest, as they say ...

When the Murray Weir was constructed, the problem arose of how to maintain river traffic, which was the life blood of commerce before roads or railways became established freight links. To get around this, a canal was constructed which cut of the bend of the river where the weir was constructed and a lock installed. A lock is simply a large bay, with doors on either end, which allows river traffic to move between the two levels of the river created by the weir. Lock eleven uses no pumps, but instead simply opens valves to allow the passage of water from the high side to the low or the release of water on the low side allow the bay to be filled or emptied with water. Very clever, very simple. We watched several paddle steamers and house boats make the transition both before and after walking around the "island" created by the canal, so we could view the weir.

Pelicans and Darters were doing a roaring trade in the turbulent waters immediately past the sluice gates on the down river side of the weir.

A quick visit to the Information Centre - oddly after we had finished our sight seeing - and then some final supplies and it was back to the caravan park for sundowners, this evening with a completely new set of neighbours. It still takes some adjustment when you overhear Sue and I being referred to as "the young couple next door".

Into South Australia tomorrow and the much anticipated Naracoorte Caves National Park.

Day 20 - Yanga Homestead

Morning beside the Murrumbidgee

Morning on a quiet bend in the Murrumbidgee River, with bird song and the occasional bleat of awild goat, is a nice place to be, especially under the river bank shade of an enormous Red Gum. Our particular patrons needed no branches to provide shade as the trunks themselves could offer enough to shade out entire, if small Avan Cruiser. There can't be too many places which can give you the serene start we all deserve to any day.

With only 160kms on the agenda for the day, we took to the Sturt highway mid morning and headed back south for a few kms and took the turning into Yanga Homestead and the headquarters of the Yanga NP.

Just as the Yanga Woolshed was the jumping off point for wool produced at Yanga Station, the Homestead was the nerve centre. The original buildings date back to the 1830, when William Charles Wentworth first set up the station and have been added onto several times, notably the 1870's addition and renovations which gave the station its unique character of wide verandahs under shingle and corrugated iron, high pitched single gable roofs, cyprus pine verandah posts and spacious, high-ceiling rooms. Further changes were made in the 1950's but many of these were bastardisations of the original architecture and detract rather than add to the homestead. Still, it has to be remembered that this was a working station, often with remote owners who left things to managers. The interior's largely 1950's decore speaks of the need for what we once might have described as a "woman's touch" but are loath to do so for fear of genderist backlash.

Back in the 1870's, workers would line up at the homestead shop to purchase their supplies of flour and sugar and meat, which would be put on "tic" and deducted from their fortnightly pay. They would never see parts of the homestead such as the dining rooms or the vegetable patch.

The verandah of Yanga Homestead

The station is lovingly preserved, virtually as it was when the Black family walked out in 2005, selling the property literally, lock, stock and barrel to Bob Carr's state government. It had been in their hands since 1919, the longest period of ownership in the station's history. The journey for Yanga has been a rougher one since it was declared a national park in 2007 and opened to the public two years later. Local timber getters have been most unhappy about the government take over of the station, as their livelyhood can no longer be resourced there. As with all new neighbours, the national park have done their best to fit in to the local community but you don't have to scratch the surface too hard in nearby Balranald or even as far away as Mildura to spark a testy reaction from locals.

Surrounding the homestead on two thirds of its sides is Lake Yanga, a kidney shaped body of water dependant on the Lachlan/Murrumbidgee systems for its supply. Today, the lake is full of water which provides a home for the water birds of the area and a place of recreation for locals - the later segregated to one section. When full, ski boats skate well over the fence posts and barbed wire underneath, for when the lake is dry, as it was from the late 1990's for ten years, it is cropped.

Our tour was guided by a park staff member who was both shared both information and a witty grasp of the anecdotal.

During our our and afterwards, we met Ziggy and Heather, fellow travellers who also towed an Avan
behind a Subaru wagon. As we talked, it seemed we had many things in common, as they had both been teachers and he also had retired early. was a blogger and keen photographer.

On to Mildura after a late lunch stop at Lake Benanee just outside of Euston and a caravan park at Gol Gol where we discovered out new neighbours were Ziggy and Heather!

Sue and I went to the Gol Gol Hotel for a treat and enjoyed both the attentive and friendly service and the good food on offer. My perch and Sue's pork were delicious and although I've had better local reds, it was quafable. All this set back from the Murray River across a broad expanse of grass verge among the ever present Red Gums.

Exploring Mildura for the next few days.