Daylesford Muster – Fryerstown School

Day 1 Sunday 10/9/2023 Home to Fryerstown, overcast 15 and dropping 11.5 in the ranges.

We’re not rushing today as the forecast predicts clearing weather and being Sunday traffic should be smoother around midday. We get away just on noon, fill up with air and fuel, and by the next suburb Woody notices the kitchen window flapping in the breeze. Gee, we’re good at this caper.

We take Eastlink and the Monash Freeway into the city and as always, we wonder why all the other drivers are in such a hurry. After 3 days of Aussie Rules footy finals, they should all be exhausted. As we skirt the city on the Bolte Bridge the CBD looks grey and uninviting, but we do say that we are overdue for a good wander around town. It’s one of those places that never fails to expose something that we’ve never noticed before.

Another bridge, going over the Bolte Bridge, Melbourne

It’s a long slow climb up the Calder Highway watching the outside temperature drop as we get higher into the Macedon Ranges. Deciduous trees are bursting with new green shoots. If you are a regular reader of this blog you will have already guessed that at this point, we must hang a leftie off the highway to pick up a curry pie at Grist in Kyneton. It’s one of those things that must be done.

Historic Kyneton is awash with daffodils and we discover that the main street is closed for the Daffodil and Arts Festival. Hordes of people are ambling about waving daffs and tartaned pipers are swishing their kilts. Somehow Woody manages to squeeze down a side street and find Piper Street, which isn’t closed and doesn’t have pipers. But Grist Bakery in the old wooden mill has run out of curry pies and we have to settle for mushroom pies instead.

It’s only another 30kms through tiny Chewton to Fryerstown and we’ve got the old school campground all to ourselves. And thank goodness we do, because it takes us a full half hour to get the van level…did we get that rusty after being home only 4 weeks?

Fryerstown School, whoops we’ve done a few wheelies!

We find a magpie nesting in dead mistletoe in a gum tree and although it watches us it doesn’t swoop. It looks like corellas have chicks in the hollow of another gum.