Charlton, Vic

Day 1 Sunday 11/8/2024, Melbourne to Charlton, crisp and clear 14 – 18

It’s hard to get our heads around packing and hitching up. It’s been a long break between trips, and we have left many loose ends which isn’t normal. But Woody’s last CT Scan has been postponed for another 6 weeks. After several operations and many procedures, we either wait at home or go, our GP says “Go!”.

Mother of Pearl (MOP) & Pearl the long-haired Chihuahua arrive and off we go. We’ll catch Elle and VeeWee further down the track. Being Sunday, the traffic is light and there aren’t any trucks. We have a dream run through the city and up the Calder Highway through the Macedon Ranges. The golden wattle is blooming.

Kyneton is always good for a bit of a leg stretch and it is busy with people breakfasting in the sun. The always ‘in vogue’ shops are alluring with ‘Country Life’ goods. The queue at the old wooden Grist Bakery stretches out the door. I wait outside on the steep wooden steps with Pearl and enjoy chatting with patrons. This little dog is a people magnet. Woody and MOP stagger out under the weight of fat brown paper bags. As we munch our way out of town, the roadsides are lined with daffodils. Gosh, this is a glorious day.

We veer off onto the Marong Bypass avoiding Bendigo city and I spot a farm advertising Emu Incubation. Now that’s a business you don’t see every day. It’s been a cold dry winter, but the paddocks are green and dotted with sheep and…a shark? No, some silly goat has painted a fallen tree, grey, white fins and a big red toothy grin.

Historic Inglewood is busy with day trippers, vintage cars, and I spot a resident planting a row of metal sculptures in his garden. Another bush artist.

There are tracts of stumpy Mallee scrub now, fluoro yellow powder puffs of wattle and cheerful orange gazanias on the roadsides.

Charlton is quiet but we must remember it is Sunday. We pull into the Traveller’s Rest RV Park and the manager breathes a sigh of relief when we ask for unpowered sites. They’re fully booked and expecting thousands through this way for the upcoming Mindi Mindi Bash up Broken Hill way.

A walk around town reveals a pretty park with a pink rotunda and a bust of John Curtin a prime minister who lived here briefly. The locals have dressed him up in winter gear to ward off the cold. In the grounds of the RV Park there is a sprawling old gum tree that once shaded the saleyards that operated here a very long time ago, and over by the Avoca River a flood marker shows that the 2011 floods were the worst in living memory topping 8.7 metres.

New Holland Honeyeaters and the not so blue southern variety of Blue Faced Honeyeaters flit about the trees as we have an early happy hour before the cool of evening. Dinner is a Cottage Pie from Grist. Oh, and the TV aerial plug breaks. There’s always some mishap.

Accom: $10.00, unpowered, toilets, showers and water available. Fuel: $ 36.27, Towing Kms: 301kms