We Have Returned Home

On our last day of our trip from Port Douglas, we only had a little over 220 kilometres to go from Sale to get back home in Melbourne. We had some spare time to see a number of things on our list of places to visit in Sale.

The first was the War Memorial outside the Sale Memorial Hall. It comprises a classical, female statue of Victory mounted on four pillars and a granite pedestal. The memorial was erected on June 16th 1924 to commemorate those who fell in the First World War and was then re-dedicated to include the names of those who served in the Second World War. A plaque next to the monument acknowledges all Australians who served in the First World War, Second World War, Korea, Malaya, Borneo and Vietnam.

I was interested to see this memorial as the grandfather of my good friend Peter Taylor was the stonemason who made the pillars on the memorial from granite that came from Gabo Island.

The second place on our list was the Sale Canal – an excavated channel approximately 2400 metres long and 30 metres wide that was created to make a direct connection between the City of Sale and the lower reaches of the Thompson River. A section 370 metres long widens to a maximum of 90 metres, forming a swinging basin in Sale.

The original purpose of the canal was to provide a navigable connection to the Gippsland Lakes for the movement of goods and passengers from the Sale railhead. It was constructed in 1888 following a report to the Victorian Government by Sir John Coode and despite the extension of the railway in 1888 it was used extensively by lake and costal shipping up to the early 1900s. It is now used mainly by pleasure craft. 

The final place on our list was the Gippsland Art Gallery; home to a permanent collection of over 3,000 items, consisting of paintings, works on paper, ceramics, sculpture, textiles, woodwork and metalwork. The collection has a focus on the natural environment, and specifically Gippsland artists and Gippsland themes. It is one of Victoria’s excellent regional galleries.

We were especially interested to see a temporary exhibition by the English painter JMW Turner (1775 – 1851). This exhibition closes at the end of this week so we wanted to take advantage of our visit to see it. Turner was an English Romantic painter, printmaker and watercolourist. He is known for his expressive colouring, imaginative landscapes and turbulent, often violent marine paintings. 

The exhibition was a bit unusual. Unlike an exhibition where a collection of paintings were all hung in a single gallery, four of Turner’s paintings were spread amongst the gallery’s permanent collection whille most of the exhibition’s works (watercolours) were displayed in a seperate area.

The most fascinating work was this one – Falls of the Schaffhausen. It was painted late in Turner’s life and there is some dispute as to whether it is actually finished or not. I understand that it was bought by The Natonal Gallery of Victoria for around $440,000 and it is now worth $45 million. Not a bad investment at all!

Our route back to Melbourne was quite straightforward along the Princes Highway – almost in a straight line.

I have checked some final statistics for our total trip. We drove 9,757 kilometres with an average fuel consumption of 6.5 litres per hundred km (or 43.5 mpg). Our car is now well and truly run in but it now needs a jolly good clean!