Jun 16, 2009

We woke to sunshine and magpies warbling after nearly12 hours in bed. Man we sleep well when we're riding!

Been a picturesque day. Breakfast at Castlemaine (way too many beautiful buildings to start taking photos). Coffee at Maldon (got a couple there).



A little cottage between Castlemaine and Maldon.

Lunch at Daylesford after travelling through Newstead and Hepburn Springs then wandered down through Trentham and hit the freeway a bit before the Bacchus Marsh area then on into the city where we had more coffee at the TDT offices in West Melbourne.

After the assault to the senses yesterday of all the green it was a shock to see how dry it was through the Midlands, particularly around the hills surrounding Bendigo and beyond. Much land had been totally dry and had recently gained a thin dusting of green and in other areas it was a darker green, but only colour, little substance to it. Dams empty or very low levels. So, gold is not the only element which has left the area but water has as well.

It's been a beautiful ride with winding roads through beautiful trees, farmland, historic old settlements and unexpected vistas. Clearly an area which needs to be explored further in the future. Many of the roads in heavily treed areas we're very bumpy, I wonder if that's because of the extended dry and the ground shrinking away with the roots left to form the bumps. Not an engineer but sounds a reasonable hypothesis until someone who knows better shoots it down in flames.



Streetscape in Maldon.

Had to crank up the hand grip warmers on the way to Trentham and left them on until we were down around the level of Bacchus Marsh Brrrrrr! The countryside around Trentham was reminiscent of the Thorpdale area not far from home. The soil looked the same chocolaty red, the trees were tall with massive trunks and the rolling paddocks were often surrounded by cypress plantations. Obviously a lot higher rainfall than surrounding areas with the level of growth through the area. We had visited Trentham around 4 years ago with my cousin and husband before we headed off on our Scandinavian holiday and we passed through Trentham the day after the hotel there burnt down. At the time I made the comment that the hotel must have been due a re-build. It was still boarded up today so it must have been a 'genuine' burn rather than a 're-build' one. (See I haven't just recently gotten cynical, I already was 4 years ago).

From Trentham we gradually wound our way down from Trentham through dense wooded areas and it somehow seemed out of character to smell the fragrance of damp fermented wood in some of the gullies after seeing so much water deprived land since Bendigo. Once down to the freeway and on to the city the vast plains looked equally as bare and dry as a lot we had seen in the interior. Bare earth with no sign of green other than the weeds along the fringe of the highway. Pretty chilling stuff at this point in the year with the weather as cold as it is even if generous rains fall through the rest of the winter there will be little growth until the spring when the soil starts to warm up again. (That's a throw back to my days growing up on the farm....must have been paying attention after all!)



View of the Town Hall from our lunch spot in Daylesford

We survived our return to full on city traffic even with stop start traffic over the Westgate bridge and then later out to Canterbury to what we call our Canterbury B&B (my cousins home) for another holiday first. We got stuck in the lift (until it re-set itself). Being 'can do' people we looked for the ceiling hatch which is in all stuck lifts in the movies but alas, none there and had to resort to the emergency phone. Ah well, you get that on the big jobs.

So we have a couple of nights here for a brief bit of R&R (so no update tomorrow) before we head home to catch up with parents, children and grandchildren. That's the easy stuff, after that it's back to work......that's the hard stuff though not all bad news since it's what will fund the next excellent adventure!

Talk to you day after tomorrow for the holiday wrap up.