We pulled into Gundagai River Caravan Park & Cabins a little after 3:00pm. The sites are very spacious and easy to back into with plenty of maneuvering room.

We were unhitched and set up in record time before enjoying a cuppa tea by the Murrumbidgee listening to the corellas screeching and squawking their way through the trees.

The amenities block was spotlessly clean and the grass around the van was lush and green. Looking right from our site we had a postcard view of the historic railway bridge especially in the evening as the sky slowly turned purple as the light faded. Directly behind the bridge is the golf course, which looked to be in pretty good condition.

Also to the right of us, on the neighbouring row of sites, was a stone monument commemorating the fact that Charles Sturt passed through this way in 1829. I’m sure Sturt had a harder time of it than us as he pushed back the boundaries of settlement.

Another quirky thing can be found at the entrance gate to the caravan park. What looks like a painted gum tree has all but swallowed a metal sign into the trunk. It must be very old given the size of the tree and that only about 15% of the sign is still visible. Most of the writing on the sign has disappeared as it is slowly being consumed by the tree.

All in all the Gundagai River Caravan Park & Cabins is a splendid caravan park. At $35/night for power and water, with large spacious van sites it is excellent value for money albeit that Gundagai is not the most exciting country town in NSW.

So… the main reason for us taking our short trip through Victoria was to catch up with Jo’s school friend Penny and her husband Steve while they were travelling around Victoria as well. We’d previously decided to meet up in Bright and stay at the Big4 Bright Holiday Park situated on the banks of the Ovens River.

Penny & Steve had recently acquired a lovely Swift caravan and were travelling around Victoria for all of March.

At the start of our trip Penny challenged us to see which couple could find the tackiest tourist gift for under $15… a challenge we gladly accepted. Upon meeting up in the Big4 Bright Holiday Park we had the customary drinks and proceeded to present each other with our gifts. Penny & Steve offloaded us with a particularly cringeworthy Melbourne Demons (AFL) football shaped wine cork remover. We were pleased to present them with a slightly offensive solar powered jiggling koala.

Between us we couldn’t agree which of the two ‘gifts’ was the tackiest so we asked the van next door to adjudicate. They proclaimed the jiggling koala to be the tackier of the two but I think we all agree that they were both very tacky and worthy of the title…

It was a thoroughly enjoyable time spent with Penny & Steve at Bright and we spent each day touring around the Buckland Valley, Omeo and the surrounds of Bright.

The Big4 Bright Holiday Park itself is not a cheap stay but on the whole, given the location, amenities, and quality of the park it is well worth the stay. Most sites are slightly challenging to back into but one in they are perfectly level and fairly spacious with lots of shade from trees and privacy. We didn’t have a slab site but instead were provided with a large rubber ‘honeycomb’ style mat, which we thought was a fence until Penny & Steve pointed it out to us.

The park is a short walk into town along a picturesque river walk that tracks down to a public water park area including a slide into the river, a diving board, water dump bucket and various water play spots. The water is crystal clear and the temperature is very refreshing…

The path takes you past the Bright Brewery where we spent our last evening with Penny & Steve sampling their beers and cider and feasting upon pizza. Their beers were quite left field with a lot of Pale Ale’s (which I am NOT a fan of)… But I did try the following:

Bright Sour – More like a cross between a cider and a wine. Interesting but not spectacular.
Mole Stout – A stout beer based around a Mexican Mole (chocolate) sauce concept… Quite smooth and chocolate’y but not creamy like Guinness.
Alpine Lager – Too floral (like an IPA) for my taste and not crisp enough.

Jo had the Alpine Dry Cider and thought it was quite good.

Would love to go back to Bright one day and despite thoroughly enjoying the Big4 Bright Holiday Park, we thought we’d probably opt to stay in nearby Porepunkah or even Myrtleford next time.

Our first outing in Bright was in search of the Buckland Valley Goldfields, only a short drive from Bright, crossing over the Ovens and Buckland Rivers at various points. A truly scenic drive with a number of points of interest along the way including a few kilometres on dirt road into the Buckland Valley Goldfields themselves.

The catalyst for this trip was for our friend, Penny, to try and track down the location of the small settlement where some of her ancestors were once located.

First stop was the historic Buckland Cemetery, which contained a number of graves from the mid 1800’s settlers and also the burial place of a number of Chinese miners that were the unfortunate subject of a massacre a racially motivated massacre there. Unfortunately Penny did not find any of here ancestors graves there but Rob did discover the grave of a ‘Maguire’, which may, or may not, have been a distant relation.

The cemetery itself was quite well kept and had a beautiful flowering gum in the centre that was in full flower with thousands of bees working away at the blossoms as well as one bright butterfly nudging its way in as well.

After the cemetery we stopped at ‘Ah Youngs Camp’… a Chinese mining camp that is now a very tranquil and relaxing free camp area. There were still remnants of the massive hand dug Chinese open mine, now overgrown, as well as two side-by-side pits that were between 8m and 10m deep. Steve found a rock that had glistening flecks throughout and proclaimed that it was gold… Rob suggested that it was more likely to be iron pyrites or mica… Undaunted, Steve kept the rock to be assayed for gold at a later time or more likely to find it’s way into his rock collection.

From the camp we followed the dirt road up to the Buckland Valley and the site of the small settlement that is no longer there but for a shallow river crossing and the ruined pylons of the third bridge that had been washed away. It was a magically serene place and at last Penny was able to discover that this was the settlement that held a school and a church denoting the place where her ancestors were. Much to her chagrin though, very close by the settlement was a place on the river called ‘Maguires Point’ so Rob thanked Penny very much for taking him on a family journey of discovery as much as her own.

Steve continued to fossick for that elusive gold nugget and ended up snaffling a nice piece of white quartz to add to his ‘gold bearing’ rock collection. Meanwhile we took the opportunity to put the drone up and get a bird’s eye view of the area.

In case you’re wondering what Steve was doing in the video… He was cracking open rocks trying to find a quick fortune in gold that had been missed in the gold rush years…

Before leaving we had a brief chat with a Queenslander who had been camping there for a few days. Interesting young bloke who regaled us of his trout fishing exploits as well as his method for cooking them in the ground in his camp fire.

On our second day in Bright Penny and Steve chauffeured us on a day trip to Mt Hotham and Omeo where Penny was once again on the trail to try and find the place where he grandmother was born in a tent back in the day…

Our first stop was at the Mt Hotham ski fields area to take in the autumnal alpine vista available from both sides of the road. It seemed that preparations were taking place for the upcoming ski season and we were surprised by the low visibility, due to fog and cloud on the trip up contrasting with the clear blue skies once we crested the pass at the top.

Mt Hotham had a slight chill in the air but aside from the handful of resort workers was eerily empty like a post-apocolyptic zombie town, which was emphasized by the cloud rolling over the range and slowly spilling down into the ski slopes.

After a short break we continued onto Omeo… another picturesque alpine town dominated by the art-deco style ‘Golden Age Hotel’ at the centre, which started life as a small timber dwelling and was rebuilt twice after the second version burnt down resulting in the grand art-deco version that we witnessed.

Just down from the Golden Age Hotel we stopped in at the Information Centre/Library/Bendigo Bank/Centrelink office where Penny did some more searching for her ancestral links to the area but unfortunately didn’t unearth anything. Following that we strolled down to the quaint Omeo Court House and the ruins of another decent sized water wheel used to drive a gold ore battery back in the day.

So at this point we were going to turn tail and head home but changed our minds and decided to continue on the loop road via Anglers Rest and Falls Creek.

Anglers Rest sits on a bend in the road nestled in the mountain tops where a bridge crosses the Cobrunga River. Just near the bridge is the Blue Duck Inn, so named when a failed gold miner nailed his gold pan to the door and wrote ‘Blue Duck’ on it, which was miners slang for a failed gold lease… Inside the Blue Duck is rustic dining area filled with wooden decoy ducks, a fireplace and a beautiful wooden kayak suspended upside down from the ceiling.

The menu was very enticing so we decided to stay for lunch and eat out on the verandah overlooking the grassy lawns heading down to the river. Penny and I opted for a cold-smoked trout (being in the mountains near a bubbling stream) whilst Jo and Steve went with the more contemporary salt’n’pepper squid.

The trout (actually from nearby Harrietville) was superb as was the squid, washed down with beers and cider making for a rather satisfying and somewhat unexpected meal… for what seemed quite reasonable prices. Jo and Penny amused themselves by eavesdropping on the couple at the next table trying to guess the reason for their ‘rendezvous’ so far from anywhere given the difference in their age and ethnicity. A variety of interesting theories were put forward.

From Anglers Rest we continued our scenic drive through the mountains stopping to view Cody’s Hut and Wallace Hut after some slightly misleading information from the Omeo Information Centre. Wallace Hut apart from being an alpine shelter is the oldest hut and part of the Wallaces Hut Walk. It was the first ‘tourism hut’ built in the Victorian Alps. The hust is quite spartan on the inside but sleeps eight in bunks with a fireplace and small side-room with a wash basin. It would be a welcome respite for hikers walking in after a long day on the trail…

From there it was back out of the mountains via Falls Creek and Mt Beauty for quick stop and a cuppa tea near the Mount Beauty Pondage. Mt Beauty itself was originally built by the Victorian State Electricity Commission to service the Kiewa Hydroelectric Scheme and you pass over one of their dams, similar to Jindabyne dam, on the drive to Mt Beauty.

The whole drive from Bright through the alps and back to Bright was scenic from start to finish. It was an excellent day out and the food of future memories…

Castlemaine is quite a surprising town… It seems much larger than it’s population of 10,000 and presents as something of a ‘cosmo-hemian’ place that is a jumble of gold-fields history, agricultural, arts-and-crafts’y mixed with a little new-age and hipster culture…

It seems like a very livable place within striking distance of Bendigo, Ballarat, Daylesford and Hepburn.

Not long after arriving in Castlemaine we took a walk up one of the streets on the edge of the CBD to have a look at the Castlemaine Anticlinal Fold. This is a really interesting geological feature that has resulted in a curved arch like layer of rock that was discovered when they dug built the street back in the 1870’s. It is beautifully exposed with a plaque describing it on top and a couple of private house are perched above it.

Another interesting Castlemaine feature is the local IGA supermarket, which is located in a massive historic brick building. From the front, you wouldn’t know it’s a supermarket. The IGA itself is one of the larger style IGA’s that is every bit as well stocked as the larger chains with the added luxury of locally sourced products and lesser known labels that provide good products at competitive prices…

In keeping with our travelling tradition our last night was Pub Night… We took a punt on another out-of-town pub, The Five Flags Hotel in Campbell Creek, a satellite village of Castlemaine. It proved to be a great choice…

From the front it’s a small country village pub with a small drive-thru bottle shop on the side. Once through the front door it extends out the back into a renovated contemporary bistro serving standard pub grub as well as a range of specials. Being a Monday Night it was $20 meal night and we took of advantage of the specials having Risotto for Jo and Scallop Pasta for me. Both were excellent and a really nice way to finish up our stay in Castlemaine… a place that we’re very likely to come back to at some point in the future.

Onwards to four nights in Bright…

The Victorian Goldfields Railway is lovingly maintained historic railway line between Castlemaine and Maldon. It operates day trips with a heritage steam train and carriages (1st and 2nd class) on Wednesdays, Sundays and some Saturdays. The trip takes an hour or so through the scrubby bush and some agricultural land.

We opted to take a 2nd class carriage and had a compartment to ourselves for the journey. The carriages are well preserved but still in need of some repair. The plump padded vinyl bench seats were more springs than padding and you learned to sit down slowly rather than being tempted to flop down onto them. That said… they were quite comfortable.

The steam engine itself runs on an oil burning engine that burns any combustible oil such as fish oil or reclaimed deep frying oil making it cheaper to run than burning diesel to heat the steam tanks.

As the engine pulls out of Castlemaine it settles into a rythmic ‘Clack, Ca-Clack, Ca-Clack, Ca-Clack…’ with each ‘Ca-Clack’ also producing a bounce in the carriage seats from the well used tracks. The bouncing could be attested by the vertical oscillations of Jo’s bosom as we choofed our way to Maldon.

Maldon is another historic gold-fields town that has the usual array of cafes, curio shops and some historic sites. The first thing you see walking from the station into town is the Beehive chimney that projects over the trees on top of the hill that still has a number of old mine shafts and building ruins.

After a walk up and down the main street we stopped at the Maldon take-away and both had a burger-with-the-lot and potato cakes (scallops for us New South Welshmen). The burgers and scallops were absolutely remarkable examples of both… Best burger and scallops in a long, long time…

After lunch we started back to the station and discovered, by accident, the Maldon Vintage Machinery and Museum. An absolute hidden gem (and free). A beautifully curated set of sheds containing a plethora of historic machinery, vintage bric-a-brac, signs nad wares. Unfortunately we only had 20 minutes before we had to be back at the station otherwise we could have spent a couple of hours wandering around.

The ride back to Castlemaine was the reverse of the trip out and just as calming ‘Ca-Clacking’ our way through the scrub and bouncing along the tracks,

Daylesford / Hepburn Springs is to Melbourne what the Southern Highlands is to Sydney… a close getaway for a day trip or (dirty) weekend where you can poke around the antique shops and ridiculously expensive dress shops and enjoy an artisan latte and watching the beautiful people stroll by in their fake animal prints, expensive ripped jeans and knee-high boots…

That said… Daylesford is a quaint little town with meandering main street lined with boutiques, cafes and curio shops. To be honest we were a little underwhelmed with Daylesford. It just seemed to be lacking in ‘buzz’ and felt a little tired… maybe still recovering from COVID…

We discovered a massive antique market, ‘The Mill Market‘, 600m down one of the side streets, which was a warehouse sized building divided up into smaller areas chock full of antiques, junk, memorabilia, old/new clothes and all sorts of treasures and junk. You could probably spend a couple of days poking around it if you’re in the market for that kind of thing…

After doing the lap of Daylesford we headed out of town to the Daylesford Cidery for a tasting paddle and oven fired pizza for lunch. It was a quite beautiful establishment with a spacious garden and lots of open air, undercover tables.

The ciders were extremely clean; leaving no after taste at all… even the strongest flavour containing apple, pear and ginger. We both agreed though, that all of the ciders on the paddle were mostly tasteless ( or very subtle as we described them to the waiter ). Not to say they were flavourless, just not very fruity and had no bouquet at all… Sadly we were not tempted to purchase any. We should also add the the pizza (tomato, basil and bocconcini) was a little on the sad side as well. Hardly any basil and could have gone another minute or two in the oven. It wasn’t bad… it just could have been much better. The cidery would be a better place for an afternoon with friends listening to some live music… alas…

After the cidery we dropped into Hepburn Springs and again were a little disappointed with the atmosphere. The place itself is lovely, especially the lake/spillway area where numerous handpumps let you taste the spring water, which is slightly aerated with a very mineral’y taste. One was most notably sulphurous and vaguely reminiscent of the water in Rotorua, NZ.

Hepburn Springs too looks a little tired and in need of some enthusiasm and sparkle. Again it may just be COVID recovery where everyone is still just a bit jaded and stressed…

Last stop before going back to Castlemaine was Mt Franklin, which was basically a steep tree covered dome rising steeply out of the ground. We decided to drive up the narrow, winding road to discover that it terminated in a large bowl shaped free camping ground that already had a few tents, camper vans and even caravans set up. One hardy camper had towed a 10m caravan (1m longer than ours) up there, which was a good effort given the narrow steep access road.

The Castlemaine Botanical Gardens are right next door to the Big4 Castlemaine Gardens caravan park. They consists of a large lake area at one end with a compacted granite path looping around the outside and into various grassy areas and gazebos.

Ducks and native water fowl are abundant around the lake and we encountered a group of four ducks having a bit of a disagreement and on other that sounded as though it was laughing it’s head… quite hilariously.

The gardens are dominated by a large number of oak trees that were festooned with thousands of acorns and littered all around the trunks. One oak in the centre of the garden dates back to the 1860’s and was ‘Tree of the Year’ in 2021. It was a grand old tree that spreads up, out and around with the lowest limbs being metres above our heads.

The gardens are quite tranquil and obviously a popular place for walking dogs as well as just chilling out on the grass with a picnic or working outdoors with a laptop…

Directly across the road from Castlemaine Botanical Gardens is The Mill, originally a wool mill, which has been restored as a cafe, artisan cheese and chocolate makers and ShedShaker Brewery.

Das Kaffeehaus is a Viennese Style coffee house that is richly and ornately decorated but still maintaining a very contemporary hipster vibe. The wait staff wear maroon aprons with white shirts and ties/scarves. It appeared mandatory that male wait staff have either dreadlocks or man-buns such was the hipster vibe. Still… the coffee was good served in large bowl style mugs on silver trays with a glass of water. We went back on our last day so that Jo could try the Schnappacino and I had a go at the cold filtered coffee. Having never tried a cold filter coffee (over ice) before I found it to be very mild and quite refreshing given the heat of the day. Jo was less enthusiastic about the schnappucino but that was probably because she attempted to do a forward one-half somersault with tuck into the ground as we were walking there. Nothing damaged but her confidence though…

All in all we very much enjoyed Castlemaine… It was very easy to spend a week there and would gladly come back in the future…

Chewton is a small historic village on the outskirts of Castlemaine… We decided to visit for two reasons; to visit the Goldfieds Diggings site and to have dinner at the Red Hill pub in the middle of Chewton.

The Diggings is a preserved gold mining site that contains the ruins of the Garfield Water Wheel. All that is left are the two massive stone support walls that held the massive, 22m, water wheel in place back in the day.

The massive support walls are still impressive standing around 12m high and dominating the space around them. It must have been an awesome sight when the wheel was on them and powering the equally massive ore batteries that crushed to quartz and rock fed into them to extract the gold.

You can wander around a posted track that takes past various features including the water course used to supply water to the wheel and the cyanide tanks where the actual gold was extracted from the crushed ore. Walking up behind the water wheel mounts it’s a bit hard to believe it could have been so high and still get the water to feed into it via a wooden sluice channel that fed the water into the top of the wheel…

After the Goldfields Diggins we headed back into town for a pub meal at the Red Hill pub, which was a small cosy English style pub with a Scottish bent. A fully independent pub it only served craft beers, which is always welcome over the usual ‘Great Northern’ mass produced swill.

The pub has a really nice beer garden beside it where meals are served and does live music, which on this occasion was a slight drawback… We were ordering our meal at about 6:00pm, as were most other patrons, and were placed directly in front of one their speakers. At 6:00pm they were only doing their sound check and they seemed to be one of those over-the-top, fanatically OCD amateur bands that insist on tuning, re-tuning, tweaking, re-tuning, stopping, tuning again and once more until they achieved their perfectly mediocre sound levels. They also, like all other mediocre amateur groups, insisted on having the volume precisely 30% higher than it actually needed to be. We’ll never really know whether they were any good or not because they hadn’t started playing before we left a bit after 7:00.

That said… it was a good little pub with interesting beers, good food and a nice atmosphere (if you could get the right non-amplified acoustic group)…

So I was watching the ABC breakfast news on Friday morning and they had a story on the Lost Trades Fair in Bendigo being held that weekend,,,

I had known about Lost Trades Fairs for some time but they were usually held in South Queensland. I had wanted very much to see one for a while but was not expecting to do so until after out Big Trip. Given the opportunity being so close in Bendigo we booked a couple of tickets for the Sunday and off we went.

Lost Trades Fairs are small festivals that showcase craftsmanship and artisan skills such as blacksmithing, knife making, bow/arrow making, basket weaving, woodworking, candle making, horologists (clock makers), dry-stone walling, coopering, wheel wrights and other skills that are being slowly lost but being kept alive by small groups of dedicated amateurs and professionals. Of particular interest to me was the bowyer and the fletcher (arrow maker). The bowyer had a beautiful range of hand shaped wooden longbows including a magnificent Canadian Yew bow… Yew being the holy grail of bow timbers and very hard to come by in Australia due to import restrictions. He wouldn’t sell that bow but put a price of $1200 on it, which I thought was pretty fair even though there were a couple of natural flaws in it.

The Fletcher was an interesting bloke who shaped his arrow shafts from a square cross-section into rounds by hand… not using a dowelling jig. This was very impressive, however I was dubious about his claims to flight quality given that they were of differing stiffness and not as straight as machined shafts. That said… each of his arrows would have had a ‘personality’ and a good archer would know which was which and allow as such.

As much as archery is my thing the standout exhibit for me was a clock that was just simply mesmerising in its beauty with a steel ball constantly rolling around a rotating cylindrical shelf atop a n ornate tubular shaft and wooden base. The clock face being a cylindrical drum with a frame through which you read the time and date. Truly a thing of absolute beauty…

The range of trades and skills on display were very broad ranging and every stall held some level of interest with the craftsman happy to share their knowledge and answer all sorts of questions. The work on display was magnificent from hand made guitars and violins to knives to dry-stone walls. Of particular note was the sign-writer who made hand-painted signs and was self taught from old books and the odd old-timer.

Really makes you want to pick a skill and get stuck in… Whilst we were at the custom made guitar stall a guy asked if he could play one of the guitars which the stall owner agreed to. We were treated to an impromptu acoustic guitar interlude that was worth the price of admission alone.

All in all it was a brilliant day out and can recommend Lost Trades Fairs to anyone who love quality craftsmanship and old world skills…

Shepparton is the atypical Victorian rural town and reminds me of a scaled down version of Mildura. It is not what you would call a tourist destination but it does have a ($52 million) Art Museum and a Silo Art trail around some of the smaller rural villages.

Like Mildura, Shepparton is surrounded by large irrigated fruit orchards as well as a patchwork of farms growing wheat, hay and grazing catlle. There’s a patchwork of irrigation channels and the typical grid layout of streets with no high-rise buildings, except for the four-storey Shepparton Art Museum that dominates the landscape near the central wetlands and park area.

Shepparton feels like a relaxed kind of town although it was the Labour Day long weekend so not a lot of shops were open and only a handful of coffee spots. The major activity of the weekend was a triathlon being held around the central wetlands/park area that seemed like a pretty big deal with fenced off finishing lanes, interchange areas and a dozen or so tent stalls selling triathlon equipment/gear.

Marg from Hurlstone Homestead suggested that we visit Phillips Cellars and Regional Wine Centre, which we did on our day of departure to stock up on some local clean-skin shiraz and SSB’s. Haven’t tasted yet but reds were $10 and the whites were $8 so hopefully they will live up to the recommendation.

It’s worth noting, from a travelling perspective, that Shepparton (like Mildura) has a large fuel station (APCO) that somehow manages to sell fuel 10 cents/litre (14 cents with an IGA receipt) cheaper than Caltex and Shell. Imagine feeling relief at paying $2.07/litre for diesel when only a month ago it was $1.59. Most places we’ve noticed are charging $2.21…

The Shepparton Art Museum is a massive four storey dark, contemporary cube like building that houses a number of public gallery and is free of charge.

It is quite stark towering above the central wetlands/park area and the inside is bright, open and spacious. With a number of large galleries each hosting their own particular display

We were lucky enough to catch the last day of an indigenous display that fascinating, respectful and challenging with a variety of paintings, sculptures and textile pieces.

My favourite piece was a painting depicting thousands of footsteps with a small patch in the corner looking like it had been scratched away to reveal a GPS style map of Redfern… Jo’s favourite piece was a very large mosaic. Both can be seen in the gallery above.

The Art Museum was a very pleasant way to spend an hour or so and get a little bit culture into our uncultured selves…

Shepparton is the hub for a number of farm villages and settlements most of which have large grain storage silos. A number of these have had artists commissioned to paint murals on them depicting a significant historical aspect of the area.

The silo art in Shepparton can be found at Dookie, Goorambat, Devenish, St James and Tungamah. It’s an easy way to spend half a day driving to each location and marvelling at the images and the effort required to create them.

We started our trip at Dookie, which only has a small painted metal silo that is directly across the road from an army surplus disposal store/coffee shop. The store is packed to the rafters w.ith used military clothing, equipment and memorabilia that you could spend hours pouring over.

There’s a coffee counter at the front operated by what may be Australia’s quirkiest barista. He looked like he was probably an army vet and had AC/DC cranking out at high volume while he stopped every now and then for a sip of coffee and dance. He asked Jo to serve four coffees to some of the outside customers while I wrote our order for him inside. A genuinely funny bloke with a quick wit. He offered Jo the waitressing job when we left

We continued our tour of the art silos via Gorambat, Devenish, St James and Tungamah; each location’s silos being distinctive with their own stories to tell. The silos are a must do when in Shepparton.

Shepparton is home to the Australian Botanic Gardens, which is formed up as a long mound situated on a former landfill site. It showcases Australian native plants on series of paths winding up and around the mound.

It’s still very much a work in progress but is extensively planted and maturing into a diverse display of Australian flora.

The botanic garden grounds also contain a bushwalk area that meanders through the scrub and past a small wetland area where we were lucky enough to see a spoonbill wading in the muddy brown water and swinging is beak side-to-side in search of food. There are also some rusty steel sculptural pieces along the track, which is not far from the railway line with glimpses of a passing freight train that could bee seen through the trees.

The Australian Botanic Gardens are located on the edge of town and well worth a look when staying in Shepparton.