We only had a couple of things planned for Day One. First was a drive to the Holden Museum and the next was a walk around the CBD and riverside. Not a lot you would think, but it took us all morning! But let me first show you a couple of photos that I took on our journey from Berri to Mildura. It is around 150km between the two places and as you cross into Victoria you go under this giant tyre arch. I have no idea what it is supposed to represent and you would think this is something they might have at Bathurst, however it is a farewell from South Australia.
It is always our plan to travel the back roads as much as we can so that we can slow down and Philip can enjoy the scenery also. Sometimes it is planned, other times it is not. Sometimes we have ended up on dead end roads and that can be a bit of a drama :-). But the back road we turn on to today is great and we see so much more of the beautiful Sunraysia area than we would on the highway. We even come across a farmer moving his sheep, on foot, from one paddock to another, cross the road that we are travelling. It brings back a lot of memories.
There are endless acres of grape vines, citrus trees, nut trees, you name it! Irrigation is such a wonderful thing and it has certainly opened up this otherwise desolate area to one that is very productive.
But getting back to our first day in Mildura and the Holden Museum. The love of Holdens run deep on both sides of our family. Philips mum and dad always drove Holdens and inside the museum, Philip pointed out the particular model that they drove. I know that my dad also loved his Holdens. I can remember three models that we had as a family, a ute, a blue station wagon and Statesman DeVille. Maybe there were more. The first memory is of the Holden Ute that had one only bench seat and it had a shelf behind it that ran the length of the seat. I remember distinctly mum, dad and three kids, driving home late at night from a visit to Pittsworth. One kid slept along the bench behind the seat, another in the stairwell at mums feet and another between mum and dad. Try getting away with that these days!!!
We loved walking around the small, but very well laid out, museum and would happily recommend it to anyone who enjoys their Holdens.
As an aside, the Holden Museum, although just a few kilometres from Mildura's CBD is actually in NSW. The Murray River is the boundary and every time you cross the river you are going from state to state. It can be confusing when you are trying to enter a destination into the car GPS.
We head back into Victoria and the Mildura CBD for the next part of our morning that is a walking tour. Conveniently, we find a park on the riverfront and decide to walk the riverfront first. When we were here last time we had hired a houseboat so we were trying to find the place that we moored. It turned out to be very easy to find as there is a large pole with a sign saying "Houseboat Mooring"!!!
The riverfront has had a total re-vamp since the 2022 floods and is a beautiful place to walk and relax at one of the many coffee shops along the riverfront.
After the riverfront our walk continues through the CBD where there are many heritage listed buildings. The view from the Grand Hotel (where Stefano's Restaurant is situated) is towards the river and I can imagine it always being a perfect place to meet and greet as the paddle ships docked at the nearby wharves in times past.
The weather has turned very chilly again and the locals tell us that this is not normal for spring. I don't mind it too much if I can stay rugged up and that is exactly what I did today. Tomorrow we are off to Wentworth.
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