Day 166 of Non-stop Traveling

Mt. Buffalo Vista


Beechworth Street Scene


Seymour Kid


Mansfield Sunset


Clare Sunset



Can you believe that it has been 166 days since we have left Byron Bay on Sept 10? I can’t, unless I look back at my notes and then at the map to see where we have gone. Day 166, and 40,000K later, whoa, no wonder we are tired. But enough, let me catch you up with this last weeks travels.

We sadly left Clare, SA. It is one of our most favorite towns. It is a decent wine region, producing about 10% of Australia’s wine and we love this town. It has wonderful boutique wines, a working town full of graziers, sheep and cattle therefore lacking much of the pretension of many of the wine regions we have been in, and we have been in many, believe me. But move on we must, so we left Clare with heavy hearts, thankful that it was raining because that made it easier.

From Clare, we headed down to Murray Bridge, down thru Pathaway, home of Lindemans wines, maybe they should call the town Lindemans! That is about all there was, vine for wine. Then on thru Narracorte, crossing the border into Victoria and weaving our way to Hamilton at the base of the Grampians where we called it a day.

From Hamilton we went back to Ballarat where we had quickly been twice before, realizing that there was more to see so we stayed at the campground we had been at before for two nights, spending one seeing the beautiful city of Ballarat, and the next day revisiting two of our favorite towns, Daylesford and Castlemaine.

We had a few days to kill so we decided to revisit places that struck us in a good way at sometime during our travels so we went back to Mansfield. This is another great town, sort of the gateway to the snow fields at Mt Buller, but full of its own character. This is known as the high country, full of cattle and sheep on the high plains before the Alpine ranges begin. It is also home to The Man From Snowy River. If you have seen the movie, then you know what the scenery it like, just breathtaking. We spent the day visiting the historic Sheepyard Flats on the Howqua River. They had started to mine gold here, but it just proved to be too difficult for the amounts found, but there are some remnants remaining. Then we drove down to Jamieson to the brewery for a late lunch.

Now we do a bit of backtracking. From Mansfield, we drive north thru the King Valley, another wine region where the Brown Brothers Estate is, along with many boutique wineries. We picked a few cellars to visit and left with more bottles to add to our collection. Up though the valley we drive to Wangaratta, where we head south on the Hume highway to Nagambie for two nights.

There isn’t much to see or do in Nagambie, but it was the closest place we could get lodging because we wanted to go to the Seymour Sustainable Farming Expo that was being held over the weekend. I suppose the closest I can compare it to is the Big E in Springfield MA each autumn. This expo in Seymour was huge, and took us two days to see it all, and even now I think we missed parts. If you want farm machinery, this was the place to be. Toys I didn’t even know what they were used for. But there wasn’t just big farm machinery, there were things for the hobby farmer, wine grower, alpaca grower, chook, sheep and goat and more. Lecture topics ranged from veterinary care, to cutting up the carcass and getting the most dollar value out of it by futher processing of the meat. There were lectures on sustainable home building and just so much more. And yes, we shopped. We now have a new fence pounder, puller, straightener which is cool, but even better, a gizmo for tying down the hay bales so when we get the bales from the field to home we don’t loose any on the road. It was a really good show, and we are very glad we dawdled along the way so we could spend some time there.

That was yesterday, now we are in Beechworth for one more night before we move on. We have been to Beechworth before, so this is our second stay for us. This town for us ranks right up there in books as a keeper with Clare. It is on the edge of high plains and the Alpine Range, and is a historic gold mining village and is just a very nice place to be. Today we were going to do the scenic gorge drive, but we found out when we got there that the drive is closed due to extensive flood damage. So, after breaking out the map, we decided to drive down to Mt Buffalo NP. It was the best way to spend the day. The water was roaring down the face of the mountain, creating all of these beautiful waterfalls, the clouds were doing special cloud things and the temperatures were quite decent which was nice. We weren’t freezing or cooking, so we really got to enjoy the views. And the views! As you will see from Steve’s photos, you look over the Alpine Range. A perfect day.

Tomorrow, we head north crossing the border into NSW, driving up thru Yass, onto Cowra and Bathurst, then just a small jog down to the Jenolan Caves, on the west side of the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. We didn’t get to see them when we were up in Katoomba when we first rocked in, so we are going to see them now. Steve promised me.