The Maternity Tree

Just off the road between Talbot and Maryborough, is a really old, large tree with an open space forming a shelter at the base of the trunk. This is the maternity tree. According to the Talbot Indigenous Heritage Web site:

Making Tracks

We have reached the end of our current house sit and we are about to embark on a grand adventure.

Bull Gully Rockwells

We visited the Bull Bully Rockwells not far from the road between Maryborough and Talbot. According to the information on the Talbot Indigenous Heritage website:

Victorian Goldfields Railway

 
To celebrate my birthday, we took a train ride on the Victorian Goldfields Railway. This is a steam engine that pulls five cars between Castlemaine and Maldon. We purchased 1st class tickets and rode in what seemed to be the club car.

Vaughan Cemetery

This cemetery is an interesting place, nestled on the side of a hill and the bottom lands next to a stream. Here we find this marker with the text engraved on it in two different directions. I don't think I've seen this before.

Vaughan Springs

Just south of Castlemaine is the Digging National Heritage Park where much of the local gold was dug. It is a beautiful area with hills and bush.

Mitiamo

A couple hours north of Castlemaine is the Terrick Terrick National Park. At the edge of this is the very small town of Mitiamo. We drove up here to see what we could see. Although the images are not very clear, we saw White Necked Herons have a feed in the fields.

Around Castlemaine

Winter is coming to an end and flowers are starting to bloom. Spring is on its way.

Old Castlemaine Gaol

On top of the highest hill in town sits the old Castlemaine Gaol. The view from here is nice, but I'm pretty sure that none of the involuntary residents were unimpressed.

A Drive in Country

We took the ute to Ballarat for some work today and when it was done, we decided to drive west about an hour before heading home. Along the way we found some idyllic sheep farms.

Dr. Blake Exhibit

In Ballarat, a bit southeast of town is the Sovereign Mine. At the same site is the Gold Museum. In there, is a good historical description of the rise and fall of gold mining in and around Ballarat. We may yet return to visit the mine to see what it was like.

However, much to our surprise, the museum was also hosting a special exhibit on the TV show The Doctor Blake Mysteries. This was fun. Above you see me behind Dr. Blake's desk with (a cardboard cutout of) him beside me.

Pennyweight Flats Cemetery

On a hill, not far from the mail Chewton Cemetery, we find the historic Pennyweight Flats Cemetery. This was on land selected for its worthlessness as a gold source. Since a pennyweight is a very small amount, the cemetery was named to be a nearly worthless place.

Chewton Cemetery

Just east of Castlemaine is the small community of Chewton. From the local paper/magazine we can tell that it is a vibrant, close-knit place. It also houses a couple interesting cemeteries.

North British Mine

Just on the edge of Maldon are the remains of the North British Mine. Much of structure that remains is related to the heaters and crushers required to extract the gold ore from the quartz in which it was imbedded.

Maldon

The town of Maldon is a delightful place. It was designated as Australia's first notable town in 1966 and is a great place to visit to see a very large collection of well preserved 19th century buildings in a small place. The 2011 census put the population at 1,432 but it was not always so small.

Newstead

In the town of Newstead are all sorts of cool buildings. The first one we came upon was this tiny church.

Newstead Cemetery

We are settled in in Castlemaine with our house sit and looking about for things to do. Of course we are starting looking about for cemeteries. The first on our list is in Newstead.

Ballarat CBD

Naturally, before we left Ballarat, we had to visit the city center. Although we've never watched the show, we're told that the Doctor Blake Mysteries (available in the US on Netflix) is filmed largely along Lydiard Street to take advantage of many fine Victorian buildings that remain from the gold rush days. It seemed fun to visit and get some images for our friends who know this show so everyone can see what it really looks like.

Ballarat Old Cemetery

After a restful evening in Ballarat, we decided to see a bit of town before we left. Naturally, our first stop was the Old Cemetery.

Lake Wendouree

After our drive about northern Tasmania, we boarded the ferry and had a quiet evening crossing the Bass Strait. This time, however, there was some stormy weather in the middle somewhere and we were awakened to some moderate tossing and turning. When I woke up to make a visit to the men's room, I found that I had to hold onto things to walk the 1 meter to reach the necessary.

By the time we landed in Melbourne, it was a calm mostly sunny morning. We drove north and west to Ballarat for our first night in Victoria. Since it is only about an hour and a half from Melbourne to Ballarat, we had time to kill in the afternoon so we went to Lake Wendouree to have a look about. Here, we got a well posed photo of a Black Swan.

Greens Beach

On the northern shore of Tasmania is a place called Greens Beach. It faces the Bass Strait that separates Tasmania from the mainland and sits where the Tamar River empties into the sea.

Batman Bridge

According to Wikipedia:

John Batman (21 January 1801 – 6 May 1839) was an Australian grazier, entrepreneur and explorer. He settled in the north-east of the Van Diemen's Land Colony in the 1820s, and later as a leading member of the Port Phillip Association he led an expedition which explored the Port Phillip Bay area on the Australian mainland with a view to establishing a new settlement there. He is best known for his role in the founding of the settlement on the Yarra River which became the city of Melbourne, eventual capital of the new Colony of Victoria, and one of Australia's largest and most important cities.

Reports are that John was not a very nice guy and he treated the aboriginals terribly. Nevertheless, there are lot of places where he is memorialized. This bridge across the Tama River is one of these memorials.

Taking care of the park beside the crossing is a rooster!

And his friend the peahen. They were "working the crowd". When a car drove in, these two would come to the vehicle to beg for food.

Traveling North

The day finally came for us to head back to the mainland and leave Tasmania (for now). Driving north across the island took us through the sheep country. In the midsts of this expansive farmland is a small town called Oatlands. Here we find the only operational 19th century windmill in the southern hemisphere.

Another Glorious Morning

I have been worried that you might think that just because the photos of sunrises and sunsets have stopped appearing, that perhaps we've stopped having anything worthy of exposing pixels to light. Au contraire!

For a few minutes the wind died down and the cloudy sky made a very dramatic image in the river.

What!? Another Sunrise?

These morning just keep coming. Don't worry, they stop because we are leaving this place along the river to head inland. But don't worry we'll be back to Tasmania in December.

Fossils at Poverty Point Beach

If we drive around through Huonville to the other side of the Huon River, we are the a peninsula of land  (between the Huon and the entrance to the Derwent) where the village of Cygnet is located. South of there about 10 minutes is the southern tip of this peninsula and a small rocky beach. While the rain shower was coming our way from the west, we were walking the beach in search of fossils. Boy, did we find them.

The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Garden

There is a large botanical garden in Hobart that is very nice. Even though we are visiting in winter, there is plenty to see. We only walked a portion of it on this visit.

Salamanca Market

Another visit to the Salamanca Market finds more interesting things to see. On this trip, there were fewer people and more vendors. The produce vendors are beginning to emerge. Don't know what there weren't so many people.

The Wooden Boat Center of Tasmania

There is a fascinating place in Franklin, just of the road from us on the Huon river. The Wooden Boat Center of Tasmania offers a place to learn about wooden boat building by taking a tour as I did, or by enrolling in a course and building your own.

The boat above, made from huon pine, king billy pine and celery top pine (all of which are conifers, none of which are actual pines) is a thing of beauty. As you can see it is riveted together so that once the wood is wet and swells a bit, it'll be watertight.

Lunch at GrandVewe

Our trip to Birchs Bay took us to GrandVewe. The spelling reflects the fact that this is a place that focuses on things made from sheep: cheese, sausage, and, surprisingly enough, vodka and gin. The name also has the double meaning of a grandview since the place sits on top of a hill overlooking the water.

Cockatoos

We have seen a new kind of cockatoo, the Yellow-Tailed Black one. There was a flock of them in the top of a tree. As you can tell from the photos (seen better in the ones below), it was raining when we saw them.

Another Fine Sunrise

Just so you know that an absence of sunrise/sunset photos doesn't mean that we've stopped having them, here's one for you. I know my northern hemisphere readers may be confused about life in Tasmania, but rest assured, the sun still rises and set a per usual on our side. Sometimes with delightful results.

The morning fog is thick enough to limit the direct light from the sun to a level that the camera can handle. You can just barely see the sun in the sky, more clearly see the reflection of the sun in the foreground on the water, and then the place near the far shore where the fog has lifted, is seen the brightest reflection.

Kettering Cemetery

In Kettering, where the ferry connects the mainland to Bruny Island, we found another cemetery. While most of this one was pretty new, there were some older stones to be seen.

Woodbridge Hill Road

On a drive to Birchs Bay that faces across the way Bruny Island, we drove along Woodbridge Hill Road. On this road we we passed a pasture where small horses were grazing. This field happens to also have a reasonably large boat sitting in it.