Renmark Round Trip, Vic, Zip Trips

Renmark Round Trip – Break it up fellas!

May 2024

Day 1 Friday 3/5/2024 Home (Mornington Peninsula) to Avoca, sunny 11 here, 18 there

With a couple of weeks to spare between medical appointments, we decide that there’s no need to sit at home looking at the calendar when the autumn weather is so mild and perfect for caravanning. Yep, we need some country air and it’s time to hitch up albeit briefly.

We take the Mornington Peninsula freeway up to South Rd, then follow the bay along Beach Rd to the Westgate Bridge. The morning is gradually warming. What seemed to be never-ending tunnel works on the western end of the Bridge appear to have been finished and instead of being on high alert for the constant lane changes that have plagued this area for several years, we relax… and miss the slip road to the Western Highway. Taking the next opportunity, it’s a bit of a slog through new housing and industrial estates around Truganina.

Just beyond Ballarat, we take the Sunraysia Highway. At last, we’ve lost the traffic. Tiny Learmonth is ablaze in autumn colours along the World War One Avenue of Honour. There are pretty buildings, a Cider Cafe and behind the town there’s a lake. Then it’s Waubra and the wind farm that we used to think was huge. How things have changed.

We arrive at Avoca in the Goldfields region of Victoria at noon to find VeeWee already parked in the large RV area beside the Avoca River. Of course, we have a new member of the team now, bright and bubbly little Molly, the poodle pup VeeWee bought on the way to the Tamworth Music Festival back in January (most people would buy a T-shirt, not VeeWee). We’re camped opposite the Chinese Memorial Garden, and it feels so good to be on the road again.

Nicola & Molly
Chinese Memorial Garden

Avoca is an interesting town, with a gold rush history. Woody’s great-grandfather was a police sergeant here back in 1865 and made the newspapers of the day when he and another officer broke up a Chinese gambling den of 100 angry gamblers who pelted the police with stones and weatherboards from the building. Which sort of sounds like quite a melee where the police broke up the gamblers and the gamblers broke up the building in an effort to break up the police.

Walking around town we are seduced by the Pyrenees Pie Shop with its 40 varieties. I’ll pass on the crocodile even if it does taste like chicken. We call an early happy hour at 2:30pm as it’s a warm sunny afternoon and we know that the warmth won’t last much longer. By 4:30 the chill starts to drop. We’re not on our own though, there are about 6 other vans here and all are parked close to us as if there is a tax on space. My theory is that they must be from large families and need to be close to other people.

Avoca River
Beef is fine thanks

Dinner is a warming dish of giant pasta shells with a green chilli sauce from home. On this trip we expect the days to be a little warmer than Melbourne and the nights a little cooler, but we don’t need the diesel heater on for long at all.

Accom $0, Fuel $61.74, Kms 233

Avoca, Vic (Map Source: WikiCamps)

16 thoughts on “Renmark Round Trip – Break it up fellas!”

  1. Fascinated by the idea of the Pyrenees pie shop. Last time I lived there, pies weren’t actually much of a ‘thing’! But it’ a good name that trips off the tongue quite well.

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    1. Ha, sorry I should have explained. Avocado is in the Pyrenees Shire and Pyrenees wine region. I guess we do have a funny mix of names from the Indigenous names to those given by homesick Europeans. You’ll laugh when you see our next destination.

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      2. Ah Margaret, you’ve got me on a pet topic. No doubt there was a lot of rowing back and forth between northern Australia and South East Asia because it is just a matter of island hopping. The Portuguese were early visitors to the west coast and one wonders if they didn’t leave more than just memories behind. The Dutch certainly appear to have left some DNA and a lot of coastline naming. The French were offshore when the First Fleet raised the Union Jack on the east coast in 1788 but were hamstrung by economic issues back home ‘For God’s sake will you stop finding new territories!’ Nicholas Baudin also mapped the southern coastline at the same time as Matthew Flinders and they dined together at least once during their voyage. I’d better stop there and not get into the good, the bad, and the ugly and all the rest. But there are a host of stories behind some of these place names.

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      3. Well, how about that? This looks so interesting, and way beyond what the average Brit (me anyway) knows about Australia’s ehnic heritage. I know you’re not all descended from convicts, but in all honesty, not a lot more than that. Thanks for piquing my interest.

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      4. Crikey, I wish the text wouldn’t change Avoca to avocado…so much for AI. If you feel inclined Peter FitzSimon’s book Batavia is a spine chilling account of the Dutch shipwreck off the WA coast which led to some sailors being cast ashore. Melbourne has a vibrant mix of people from all corners of the globe, we are a bit like a box of chocolates. Not forgetting Adelaide’s strong German ancestry. Hubby’s family is peppered with Russian German musicians who came out for the gold but probably made more from their brass oompah band. I’ve been sorely tempted to research my own area because it has a strong Italian background from the 1890’s. And we can’t forget the hardworking Chinese who worked tirelessly all over the country supply food and tools to the miners. I’d say there’s barely a region on this earth that hasn’t left its mark here. Vive la difference!

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  5. We had a crocodile pizza up in the NT a few years ago. Not too bad but first and last time, I’ll keep to my Hawaiian. The dogs are little cuties!

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