8 February 2012 - Prince of Wales Showgrounds, Bendigo, Victoria

We are still here despite my negative comments about the place yesterday. In fairness to the Showgrounds camp, I must say that the facilities are quite adequate, the washing machine is free and the tariff at $20 per night is very fair. So despite it not being a “nice” camp, it should be considered if one is travelling on a shoestring as yours truly attempts to do.

Beside Lake Eppalock

This morning dawned clear and cold; a chilly 12 degrees. We headed out for our last day’s exploration of Bendigo and surrounds, calling in to Office Works on the way, forever reliable and fair, to have some printing done, and then headed south east toward Lake Eppalock, the irrigation reservoir between Bendigo and Heathcote, covering over three thousand hectares. Completed in 1964, it still sports the skeletons of trees cut off in their prime by too much water. Perhaps these trees sprouted and grew when the lake was dry or near dry as it has been during the drought years of its life. It is now full, and promises all sorts of recreational activities. We drove to various points on the lake, more particularly down the western side and at nearly every turn, access was blocked by “Private” signs. There are scores of private camps belonging to various social, ski or fishing clubs, full of old caravans supporting fibro annexes and obviously well used during holiday weekends and the like. We saw few people about today, but then most of these club members were probably busy working. The lake is surrounded with low hills and so we believed the lake to be quite shallow, although further investigation advised that the average depth is between twenty and thirty metres, a fact that surprised us. We could not become as excited about the lake as the volunteer in the Information Centre had been when he told us about it on Saturday.

The barren Pink Cliffs Reserve

Since we had “done” the lake in record time, and the day was still young, we drove on to Heathcote, which fills several pages in the Bendigo promotional booklet. This too was begun during Gold Rush years and today with a population of just under 3,000, promotes itself as the home of amazing wines. The small country town is spread along a couple of kilometres, quite a pretty place but many of the buildings well overdue for a paint or facelift. There are many B&Bs, cafes, cellar doors, an IGA superette, and at least half a dozen real estate offices which seem hugely disproportionate to the size of the place. We walked up and down the streets in the sunshine, before driving the kilometre or so to the Pink Cliffs Reserve. Here we sat under the gums to enjoy our lunch and then walked the half hour trail about this pink moonscape; land eroded by sluicing for gold mining. There is also a wonderful walking track up to the Devil’s Cave and Viewing Rock; we took the promoters’ words for it.

From Heathcote it is a straight forward forty seven kilometres up the McIvor Highway back to Bendigo, through small settlements, some so small they have disappeared except for the plaque that announces their past existence. The open bush gives way to cleared pale gold gentle rolling country, grazing modest numbers of cattle and sheep.

We were back at camp early in the afternoon to deal with dreary matters conveyed to us on line, and to consider our route to the State’s capital tomorrow morning. We will not be sorry to leave Bendigo as it did not inspire us as did Ballarat and so many other places we have passed through.

Bendigo has many tourist attractions which we have not visited, most importantly the Golden Dragon Museum, which holds two imperial Chinese dragons, one the oldest in the world and the other the longest in the world. This museum is reputed to be the very best of all museums celebrating the Chinese contribution to Australian history, with them having made up 20% of the Bendigo population at the height of the gold rush, however for us, we all Chinese museumed and gold rushed out. Perhaps if we had started our gold rush discovery here, we may have formed a different impression of Bendigo.  But like all travel, each destination is a unique experience for those who pass; none can possibly agree and rate places exactly in the same way.