Tuesday 19th September 2023
Leaders: Bill and Gill A
Participants: Graham, Ignatius & Angela, Paul & Tineke, Peter
19th September saw a perfect Spring Day and 5 cars meeting at the cafe in Romsey for an exploration of some historic sights outside Melbourne. Our focus was to find the geographical centre of Victoria. Along the way we immersed ourselves in some Victorian History. The first stop was a marker for camp 4 of the Burke and Wills expedition. Proceeding onto the next camp, camp 5, the marker eluded us, but the general vista and area around sparked our imagination and gave us a good idea of distances travelled with their huge caravan of belongings and equipment by Burke and Wills.
Stop 3 had a totally different focus with 2 parts. There was an unusual monument for the first Australian made powered aircraft designed and built by John Duigan in 1910 which completed a 7-metre hop. At the same location was a sad memorial to 11 passengers on the VHUYY Tokana who tragically lost their lives, including 2 young brothers in a plane crash. It was the Australian National Airways Mail Plane; the plane was on its regular route between Melbourne and Broken Hill in 1945. A structural weakness caused a failure in the wing and the plane lost control.
We then traversed the area around Heathcote. After a short stop at the bakery, we proceeded to the One Eye Forest area and had lunch by the saw-pit dam. This was a lovely shady area with kangaroos enjoying the cool and water.
After touring around the back of Lake Eppalock we found the Burke and Wills camp 6 marker, a second adjacent plaque gave a short excerpt from their diary.
A short stop at an old fording place on the Campaspe River, where some old flagstones had been taken as souvenirs.
Then the trip culminated at the spot marking the geographical centre of Victoria with much discussion on what the mark actually represented.
We then travelled on to Rotary Gateway Park at Kangaroo Flat, Bendigo where the trip was brought to an official end.
It was a great day out with perfect weather, enjoying rural vistas, rolling hills, old gnarly trees and spring flowers. Although it was school holidays there was very little traffic. The longest hold up was the road construction vehicles but we enjoyed the smoother conditions, and they had a job to do. We had all learnt more of the history and geography of Victoria and enjoyed exploring unknown hidden gems for us city dwellers.
Text: Gill A.
Photos: Paul D