Sometimes, you find some words that remind you of things that you have forgotten. That’s what happemed to us on our drive from Mildura to Stawell.
They started when I used a voice command to start the car’s navigation system with the instruction”Take me to Stawell”. It didn’t recognise the destination and gave me directions to a hairdresser in some other place. I know that it works somewhat phonetically so I changed my instruction to “Staywell” and of course that worked perfectly.
Irymple is a little town near Mildura and we noticd that the swimming pool was named “Irymple Baths”. In most places, the word ‘Bath’ has long since been replaced with the word ‘Pool’ or the more highfalutin term of ‘Aquatic Centre. But not in Irymple. Perhaps people still go there with a cake of soap?
A billboard by the road was an advertisement for a medical practice – a doctor who specialised in vasectomies. There was an image of a doctor with two smiling nurses and the message ‘Come and see Dr Snip’. That says it all but I’m not sure why the nurses had such a wide smile.
We reached the town of Ouyen for morning tea (coffee) and called into the Mallee Cafe for a vanilla slice and a coffee. This was the place that our previous Premier, Jeff Kennet, made famous by declaring that their vanilla slices were the best in Victoria. This declaration started an annual competition which the cafe in Ouyen won for fourteen times in a row.
Here I am with my coffee and a ‘snot block’, the slang term for a vanilla slice, (custard slice in New Zealand) transferring the payment of money from my bank account into the BMW dealer’s account back home to pay for my new car that I will pick up on Monday. In some ways, I’ll be sad to leave our current car as a trade in. It has performed really well on this trip – around 11,000 kilometres and it hasn’t missed a beat.
At Red Cliffs, just south of Mildura, we drove to the lookout over the river. It wasn’t marked very well but we eventually found it. In my childhood, my father’s hobby was to breed and show budgerigars. The entire family came here for a few days, staying witn a local family, when he came to judge a local budgerigar show. In thiose days, Red Cliffs and Mildura were not connected to the states electricity grid and a power staion on the site of this lookout created electricity with water from the river and by burning briquettes. I have some good memories of that visit – travelling on the overnight Vinelander train, learning to swim in the irrigation channel and surviving increadible heat.
Also at Red Cliffs, is the historic ‘Big Lizzie’ steam engine. She was built to replace the camel trains which carried wool and other heavy loads in the sandy terrain of inland Australia. Early in 1916 Big Lizzie left Richmond expecting to go to work around Broken Hill by early 1917. She was unable to cross the Murray at Echuca because of floods, and the lack of permission to cross the bridge to the town. She ended up clearing scrub for a proposed 6,000 ha irrigation area at Red Cliffs to provide 700 Soldier Settlement blocks for veterans of World War 1.
The engine is 34-feet long and complete with the trailer 98-feet long and 18-feet high. It weighed 45 tonnes and could carry 80 tonnes. Powered by a 60hp Blackstone diesel engine, it had a turning circle of 200-feet and a top speed of 2 mph.
After being cleared, much of the area in the Mallee and Wimmera areas is now prime grain growing country. This is obvious as you drive. It’s not long before tall silos appear on the horizonacross the landscape . Most of these are no longer used because current grain handling technology has shifted to large bins with kevlar coverings.
After Ouyen we followed some back roads to Hopetoun and then south to Stawell. It’s obvious that we are back in Victoria. The road on which we travelled was the worst road for our entire trip. It was bumpy and worn, the shoulders were slumping and there were frequent potholes. We haven’t seen a road like it for weeks.
Warracknabeal is the largest town in the area and is prosperous because of the peas, canola, lupins and beans as well, of course, wheat and barley. It is located on Yarriambiack Creek which we must have crossed five times on the road south of Ouyen. It’s name appears to come from a term used by the local Wotjobaluk Aborigines to describe the huge river redgums that line the banks of the creek.
The roundabouts in the main street of Warracknabeal have sculptures that represent this agricultural economy. They show sheep and a working dog that came with early pioneers.
There are a number of impressive buildings in the town’s main street. The most impressive is the Tudor-style post office (built in 1907) with its unusual arched entranceway.
Another building of interest is the old State Savings Bank building (1909) which features some fine multi coloured brickwork. It was built in the days when banks had significant status in the community.
The silos at Brim were one of the first on the silo art trail but have faded significantly. The art work depicting local characters is now getting hard to see
Further south is the town of Minyip. It’s a quiet nondescript rural town, other than the fact that it was used as the setting for The Flying Doctors TV series. Some of the businesses are hanging on to this notoriety but I thought that the most impressive buildings were the two large and ornate pubs.
Just before reaching our destination at Stawell, we travelled through Rupanyup. The silo there is much more vibrant – a later addition to the silo art trail. It depicts a young boy looking across a wheat field towards the Grampian Ranges wih a Blue Wren on a fence post.
We will stay in Stawell for two nights before returning home. Jill’s father was posted here as a bank manager when she was a child and this is where she started school.
