Saturday 22 February 2014

22nd Febuary 2014-From Port Fairy to Glenrowan

22nd February 2014
On the 13th February we left Port Fairy and headed north-only went 84kms to arrive in Hamilton. the big attraction in Hamilton is their speedway track. There was racing on Saturday 15th with a big list of sprintcar nominations so how could we resist?!
HAMILTON SPEEDWAY - A BIG NIGHT OF RACING AND HOTDOGS!!

The Hamilton Caravan Park was a handy walking distance from town so we were able to head in anytime we wanted AND get some exercise. Hamilton isn't hugely set up as a tourist destination but Les and I each found something we enjoyed.

I headed into their art gallery and was able to browse a fantastic collection of glasswear, tapestries and a very large collection of watercolours!!
HAMILTON ART GALLERY-FULL OF BEAUTIFUL ITEMS EVERYWHERE I LOOKED!!

Les found the Ansett Museum. Apparently the Ansett company was first formed in Hamilton before it moved to Melbourne.
ANSETT MUSEUM
The Ansett display held an huge amount of items relating to Ansett and it's founder. They had a HUGH collections of those vinyl bags that everybody used to get when they flew, remember those?

We left Hamilton and headed for Bendigo to pick up our mail that had been sent on for us to collect (thanks Darren and Jen!!) but we didn't make it........the beauty of having no schedule is the ability to do exactly what ever you want. So there we were just chugging up the road, had only gone 80km, but due to a late start it was almost lunch time when we noticed a big lake and thought it might be a good place to stop to eat. When we drove down the side road we found ourselves at the edge of a beautiful lake and there were 2 other vans already there, they were settled in to spend the night so we thought that we might as well join them!
LAKE BUNINJON-WITH THE GRAMPIAN MOUNTAINS IN THE BACKGROUND
This camp site was a great place to spend the night, we could hear the birds tweeting to each other during the night.

The next day we tried again to get to Bendigo and this time we made it!!! We stayed at Marong which is a little town just 12kms west of Bendigo...this had the advantages of being close to shops/mail but the benefit of being in a quiet little town. It was a hot day so after a quick trip into the post office to grab the mail, we fueled up the car and grabbed some groceries, which gave us enough time for a good swim in the pool!!

We were in Bendigo 3 years ago and had already done all of the tourist things (we had visited the mine, seen the Chinese Museum, rode a tram and walked the main street) so we decided to move on to new things rather than repeating what we had already done.

We left Bendigo heading to Glenrowan-the scene of Ned Kelly's capture (again we had visited here 3 years ago but this is such a cute town that we couldn't resist visiting again!) We booked into the local caravan park and headed back into town to the Ned Kelly museum/cinema thingy (this museum is very hard to define but is very different to anything we have ever seen) this museum does have the actual timber bar that was in the pub where Ned and his gang had their final shoot out, AND it has a pistol that was found on his body when he was captured.....really cool stuff!!
BIG NED!!!

With the sightseeing all done and the caravan park not being the greatest, the next day we headed off toward Wagga Wagga. But again we had a dramatic change of plans, whilst cruising up the M31 we decided that Wagga would be too big/bustling for our tastes and so took the other fork in the road and ended up in Gundagai!!!! There is plenty to see and do here in Gundagai and we will be staying for a few days to fit it all in....see you next time!!

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