Rochester Riverside Holiday Park

Rochester Riverside Holiday Park is where we laid up for Easter. It is a relatively large park but the sites were a little squeezy for a large van with the awning out and car parked beside. The amenities were very clean and new and there was also a large new camp kitchen in the centre.

Overall it was a very well run caravan park with friendly staff and managers. The only problem was that, with the park being quite full, a lot of sites wanted to have a fire-pit… Everyone loves a fire in the evening but the there was hardly a breath of wind over the four days so the smoke from the fires just hung in the still air. By 7:00pm your eyes started stinging from the smoke and stayed that way until going to bed.

One unexpectedly good  thing about the stay was that the park put on some live music on the Easter Saturday night. A duo called ‘Stolen Apples‘, from Melbourne played a range of covers from 7:00pm ’til 10:00pm. They were surprisingly good, keeping true to the original songs but injecting just enough of their own sound to make them refreshingly different.

The duo were both ’20 somethings’ and it never ceases to amaze me that most cover groups, despite their age, only ever do songs from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s… You (or at least I) never seem to hear covers from the 90’s or after…

Rochester

Rochester is small rural town with a quiet atmosphere and quaint main street. Lots of historic looking building (mostly the pubs) are evident but perhaps the most striking feature is the silo art near the railway tracks and the water towers reaching into the sky.

Rochester is typical of many Victorian country towns. The standout feature is the silo art in the center of town and also the Ron Iddles mural in Iddles lane. Ron Iddles is a Victorian an has been dubbed Australia’s greatest detective with a 99% success rate.

River Walk

Like most river towns there is a river walk along the banks of the Campaspe River. The Campaspe is a small river with no discernible current that is a bit browner than the Murray and the Murrumbidgee but still quite attractive in its own right,

The river itself is about seven metres below the top of the banks, which are quite steep. There are lots of the ubiquitous river gums along the banks, some young, some old, some dead and decaying. The walk takes you, in one direction, down to the ‘Red’ Railway bridge, which is built on red brick pylons and quite distinctively Australian looking in it’s design.

Heading back in the opposite direction we happened to be in the right place at the right time to witness the recovery/salvaging of a shiny (new looking) camper trailer that appeared to have plunged seven metre from the top of the river bank into the river itself. A medium size tractor was struggling mightily to lift and drag the trailer away from the bank and back to the top. Upon spying us watching from the other side, the tractor operator shouted out to us, “It’s tough up here in the Kimberly…”. We shared the laugh and stayed around until he finally dragged it up to the top of the bank gushing water out all the way. Once at the top he pulled out one of the side drawers, inspected the content and shouted out, “Dry ‘za bone…”. Another good laugh…

Shamrock Hotel

We stuck to our tradition of having a pub/club meal on the last night of our stay. Rochester has a few pubs and we ended up having a couple of parmi’s at the Shamrock Hotel.

The Shamrock Hotel is a grand old pub standing proudly in the centre of town. We started with a couple of drinks in the main bar where the locals were propping up the bar t the end of the day. We both had chicken parmi’s,,, Jo had a McPaddy’s (bacon, onion rings, cheese, etc…) and I had a Bass Strait (bacon, prawns, cheese, etc…). Good honest pub fare at reasonable prices and the servings were huge. Both of us were defeated having to leave what probably would be a normal size meal on the plate after we finished.

Onwards to the Rutherglen district and Corowa (NSW) in particular…