Dipping Our Toes into Victoria

Lockhart - the water tower in the background has recently been painted to depict some of the local birdlife.

Hello reader! Just thought I'd jot down my journeys this weekend for posterity.

Nicole and I came down to Wagga Wagga a couple of days ago so we could visit my brother in Lockhart. It's a short trip, just a few days, and I type this blog entry from the desk in our hotel room. We've been trying to get away somewhere for a little while but our last stretch of time off together was just spent at home due to some impending renovation costs. As it's (roughly) the Christmas season and my brother has just had his birthday it was nice to be able to come down to the Riverina and say hello to him, his wife, and my niece. 

But I tell you what - the first day driving down here was like riding in a space capsule that was orbiting closer and closer to the sun. The 45 degree heat was our third passenger in the car; constantly turning our air conditioner down, pushing my face directly into the hot window, and wringing every inch of sweat out of my forehead. We pumped the hotel's air conditioning all night and managed to get our bedroom down to a cool 30+ degrees.

While we were visiting the Lockhart Bartolos, my brother Jon suggested checking out Beechworth on our day of travelling. We were looking for somewhere new to go so we ducked down over the Murray River for the day and visited the historic Victorian town on his recommendation. 

Looking down the main street of Beechworth

Turns out Beechworth is a bit of a Ned Kelly spot owing to his incarceration in Beechworth Gaol. As you walk through the town's sandstone district and past the tourist shops it becomes evident that there are rusty steel effigies of the proto-hipster bushranger everywhere. The visiting tourists are an odd mix of upwardly mobile senior citizens who are drawn to the boutique stores, foreign visitors hoping to see some history, and foul-mouthed singlet-wearers who idolise Australia's most famous criminal. It was quite a vibrant scene.

A tree on the main street

Centre of town

We overheard someone talking about how great Beechworth Bakery is so we decided to go there for lunch. The place was absolutely packed; just a mess of queues crisscrossing everywhere and eight staff members behind the counter who all coincidentally had apparently just started working there that day. Well, I don't really know that, but it seems to be the most reasonable explanation for their lack of service skills. 

As I lined up I listened to two British tourists behind me as they read the menu. One explained to the other what kind of pies they have:

"What's the Australian pie?" the older one asks.

"Bacon, cheese, and egg. Do you want that one?" says the other.

His friend replies with a horrified, "Good lord, no!"

I tried not to laugh too loud.

When I got to the front I worked my way through the menu until the lady behind the counter and I could reach an agreement that my item of choice was available for purchase (some things on the menu were crossed out due to being out of stock, and some things on the menu weren't crossed out but also were out of stock). I got halfway through asking for a pepper steak pie when a customer came back and complained that her pepper steak pies had chicken in them. The lady behind the counter took them, looked carefully at their crust, and confirmed with the kitchen that some pies had been filled with the wrong recipe. This meant that, when I received my pie, said staff member stuck her finger under the lid of the pie in front of me and lifted it up to check what was inside it. 

So, yeah, that was a fun adventure. 

Beechworth Honey Shop

This pipe sucks bees in so they can create honey inside the store. This is easily my favourite thing about the store and I'd love to see more shops incorporate living animals in this way.

We kept exploring the rest of the town, visited the Beechworth Honey Shop, found a pretty cool secondhand bookstore inside an old church building. Nicole then did some preliminary research using the Information Centre (she loves Information Centres) and decided we could go visit the Yeddonba Aboriginal Cultural Site just a little ways to the north, so off we headed.

Bookstore in foreground

Visiting Yeddonba involved driving into Chiltern National Park via a series of dirt roads that spiralled further and further off the highway. The Yeddonba site is located in the middle of a semi-circular walking track that winds up into a rocky hillside that overlooks the box-ironbark forest. Once we found it via car the walk itself took only about 45 minutes.

Yeddonba is considered sacred to several local Aboriginal peoples, with the Dhudhuroa, Pangerang, Minjambuta and Jaitmathang all living in its vicinity prior to European invasion. There are several Aboriginal-authored signs around the track that explain the cultural significance of the local hillside caves and the rock art that can be seen here. 

The drive in. Not the worst dirt road we've unexpectedly found ourselves on!

View from the petroglyphs down into the national park. A beautiful spot - photo doesn't do it justice.

The rock art is quite impressive. Over time it has faded quite a bit but in the daylight it can still be seen clearly enough. The most interesting aspect is the depiction of a Thylacine, an animal that has been extinct on mainland Australia for at least 1000 years. The dating of these particular petroglyphs is estimated to be between 2000 and 10 000 years of age. 

There's something awe-inspiring about looking at artwork that has sat largely undisturbed on an ancient rock-face for an amount of time that dwarfs most of Western recorded history. In this one image of a Thylacine, without any need for scientifically-verified fossil records, we have proof that this marsupial lived on Australia's mainland. I try to imagine what the Chiltern forest was like before the Europeans arrived but pull up short of a reasonable replication - the history is too remote, too distant. All I have is this fading painting and a kind of Gothic solitude interrupted only by birdsong.

Despite my sense of isolation, or perhaps because of it, I feel immensely grateful that the Aboriginal elders of this area have allowed for visitors to share in experiencing it.

Other Australian Travels
North Coast NSW - Byron Bay, Nimbin
The Sapphire Coast 1, The Sapphire Coast 2 - Green Cape, Boydtown, Eden
The Snowy Mountains - Tumut, Adaminaby, Cooma, Candelo