Friday 8th April.
Hello again. We have decided to include the dates as we go so if you want you can see what we have been up to on any day. Also it will help us when we want to look back on where we were at any given time. So, today we travelled from SWAN HILL to MILDURA. Nothing at all very exciting about the trip. Lots of vineyards and orchards, separated by miles of flat, useless looking, mallee scrub land. A lot of the land must be prone to flooding by the look of it as there was still a fair bit of flood water lying about.
Mallee scrub is the name given to a small gum tree that grows to about 3m. In the early days it apparently covered most of the land for hundreds of miles around this area, and had to be cleared before any farming could be done. The roots are particularly hardy to the point that the root clumps were often used for fences around houses. At the Swan Hill Pioneer Village, there was even a stable where the walls were built of mallee roots stacked together. Sput, the Horse and buggy man, who had spent most of his life farming in the mallee country, told us one root clump about the size of a rugby ball, would burn white hot all night, and was very popular in the old days for house fires. We were to come across more about the mallee scrub later.
After we left SWAN HILL we travelled along the Murray Valley Highway, which in itself basically follows the Murray River. We stopped for lunch beside the river, at a place called BOUNDARY BEND, which was nothing more than a garage and a shop, and then continued on to ROBINVALE where we crossed over the Murray into New South Wales. We were now on the STURT HIGHWAY, and 80 odd km later reached MILDURA. Between ROBINVALE and MILDURA there was very little to see, just Mallee Scrub as far as the eye could see.
While we were in SWAN HILL we had been enjoying beautiful sunny days with temperatures in the high 20s. As we travelled north towards MILDURA, the temperature gradually rose and by the time we got to MILDURA it was sitting on 30.
MILDURA straddles both sides of the Murray River, with the main part of the town on the Victoria side. It is well known for its Paddle Steamers and House Boats. Our camp ground was right on the river on the New South Wales side, and we look straight across the river into the main shopping centre of MILDURA.
After we set up camp, we decided to make the most of the lovely weather, so took our camp chairs and a glass or two of Aldi’s $2.49 bottles of wine, (Eat your heart out Joe), down to the river’s edge, and enjoyed watching the paddle steamers and house boats slowly chugging past. Later we joined Cameron and a couple of mates he had found, while they fished for the Mighty Murray Cod. God only knows what would have happened if they caught one, as we had seen one stuffed specimen which weighed in at 140 pounds.
Saturday 10th April.
This morning we decided to go about 10 km south to the township of REDCLIFF to see ‘Big Lizzie’. We had read about and seen pictures of her in several brochures and decided she would be well worth a visit. We also wanted to see the Red Cliffs themselves, and the Psyche Pumps, which were also well advertised in the local brochures. However before that, we had to throw Cameron’s Yabbie net in the river hoping for some fresh yabbies for tea.
Big Lizzie is not a local woman badly in need of some advice from Jenny Craig; rather she is a ginormous tractor.
She was built in Melbourne in 1915 to overcome the problems of hauling heavy equipment over the sand which covered much of inland Australia. She weighs in at 45 tons, is 34 feet long and 18 feet high. Her most peculiar feature are the ‘feet’ which were attached to her wheels to enable her to negotiate soft sand.
Unfortunately they were never put to the test, as after taking two years to travel from MELBOURNE to MILDURA, (she couldn’t go very fast), and she couldn’t cross the Murray because of floodwaters.
Luckily for the owners of Big Lizzie, at about this time the Australian Government decided to ‘open up’ a lot of the Mallee country around MILDURA for farms for soldiers returning from the war. The town of RED CLIFFS was actually settled as a result of this decision. This is where big Lizzie really made her name, clearing huge areas of mallee in about a 10th of the time it would have taken with horses. They would hook up about 6 or 8 mallee trees to Big Lizzie and she would pull them out.
She was later used for all sorts of cartage jobs, moving loads far in access of anything else available. We saw photos of her with two traction engines loaded on her trailers, chugging along the road. Bet you never expected to get a lesson on Australian History, did you? She now stands proudly on display in RED CLIFFS town. You actually have to stand beside her to get the full impression of her massive size. You can read more about her by googling Big Lizzie on the internet where there is a lovely photo of her posing beside a Series 1 Land Rover. (I bet you can’t resist that Sid).
From Big Lizzie we drove out to the Murray River to view the Red Cliffs, another attraction we had seen in a brochure, and supposed to be the area after which the township got its name. We finally found the spot, hidden in the scrub, but were quite disappointed with what there was to see. Just some fairly insignificant red coloured banks along the side of the Murray. After that we drove to the ‘Psyche Pumps’, about which a huge amount of information had been available.
MILDURA and its’ surrounding areas are known as the ‘Fruit Bowl’ of Australia, largely due to the irrigation system established in the area in the mid 1800s. (More History lessons). Water is pumped out of the Murray River and is then channelled for hundreds of miles for irrigation. The Psyche Pumps were the original pumps used for this purpose. Driven by steam, they pumped huge amounts of water into the irrigation canals for over a hundred years. Without them MILDURA and her surrounding areas would never have developed, so for the locals they are a vital part of their history. The size of these pumps was enormous and the sheer size of the whole undertaking was quite staggering, but to an outsider not something you would rush off to see.
As we drove back towards MILDURA we could see rain clouds gathering in the distance and the wind was getting up as well. We had lunch in town then hurried back to the caravan just as the rain arrived. We checked the yabbie net only to find something had had a real go at the bait, but nothing caught. We chucked it back in. The wet windy weather set in, and the temperature suddenly plunged to 14 degrees, so for the rest of the day it was Monopoly and cards and then bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment