Echuca/Moama to Melbourne 4^th December 2014

Echuca to Melbourne

In the morning we popped down to the Port of Echuca by the side of the Murray River to see the heritage exhibits. 

Sheila & Mike enter the Port of Echuca

This included the river steamers, one of the very old and heavy barges, early versions of the large steam engine tractors and a log buggy (wagon) with wooden wheels made from cross sections of a trunk that would have been pulled by bullocks.  

Mike with log buggy

Steamboat flying Murray River Flag

There was also a winery selling white port in gallon sized containers.  We checked out the name of a bird in a local art gallery where there were a few paintings of birds and the artist decided to give us a musical rendition of the “official” Aussie welcome even at 9:30am in the morning.

We headed out of Echuca and onto Bendigo.  The road went largely straight for miles across arable plains along avenues of eucalyptus trees. At one point along the route we spotted dozens of Dutch Barns full of bales of straw, a quantity for Sheila, who was a farmer’s daughter, found mind blowing.

Bendigo was the centre of the gold rush in the 1800s and drew a massive number of foreign workers, particularly Chinese, to work in the mines. Considerable wealth was gained by some of the miners and today the city is quite extensive with a population of 110,000 or more.  There is also an Australian bank named after Bendigo and well known in Australia. 

We decided to take the local tram through the town to see the various heritage sites.  This service was run by volunteers and a recorded commentary was provided with a few additional comments provided by the drivers.

Bendigo Tram

Sheila checks out tram depot

On leaving Bendigo the terrain changed markedly with the addition of rolling hills, the first we had seen since leaving Albury. We stopped along the way in Malmsbury for tea and cake at a local bakery, a not an uncommon occurrence in the afternoons.

Afternoon Tea

Eventually we reached the outskirts of Melbourne and our satnav system, which was picking up the local traffic information, constantly recalculated our route to work us around the 5pm traffic jams. Melbourne have trams and we came across the unique feature of a “hook turn” where one is instructed, both by road signs and the satnav system, to bear left to turn right so as not to impede the trams traveling down the centre of the roads. We were fortunate that someone was in front of us to demonstrate the manoeuvre otherwise we would have been in a pickle.

Hook turn