After saying goodbye to everyone at our Wilson family Christmas get together on December 29, Jill & I travelled on to Beechworth in northern Victoria for a few days.

We stayed, by chance, at a B&B homestead about 8 kms from town which had a splendid view over the Buckland Valley. In the photo below, you can see Mt Buffalo in the distance and the valley in the golden light of sunset. We were offered this place at half price by the owner Jill (a different one) because she had a cancellation and so we ended up having the run of an entire house with five bedrooms, three bathrooms, kitchen and enormous living area. Now, when I say that we had a ‘hot weekend’, I don’t mean that in the sense of it being ‘raunchy’ as some of you might think! The large house could have given us room for lots licence for that, but it was just bloody hot weather! The average temperature on all three days of our stay hovered at 37 degrees C (100 F).

We can recommend The Vision Splendid as a fine place to stay – especially if you have a large group. It can accommodate up to 15 people.

Our plan was to visit our friend David, and then to spend a few days sight-seeing in the area. Well, it was so hot that all our plans evaporated and we spent more time that anything trying to stay cool.  On one day, we braved a walk through the historic old gold mining town and on another, we drove across to Mt Beauty and gained some benefit from the air conditioning in the car.

Our trip home was very hot and we managed to take a photo (below) just to show how hot the outside temperature was on New Year’s Day according to the climate control system in our car.