Day 9 Monday 23/12/2024 Buronga, cool windy 10 – 25

We’re woken at 6:00am by the paddle steamer PS Melbourne coming into port. She’s still wood fired thus a true steamer I’m told. She gives a healthy toot anyway.

Once more we return to Trentham Estate, this time much earlier, and pick up our 2 boxes of wine, plus an extra box for every box of 6 we’re given, 2 extra bottles for ordering online and another for picking up our order and saving their transport cost. All in all, we leave rather confused with a carload of wine plus yesterday’s bottle and that averages out at $12 bottle. That’s the price of a glass in most pubs these days.

We take a quick detour to the supermarket and thank goodness our Xmas needs have been taken care of. The trollies are queueing up just to get in.

After lunch I drop Woody in the park for one of his longish walks while I go in search of buildings. The Queen Anne style Rio Vista was built in 1889 for W.B. Chaffey and to my delight it’s open and so is the art gallery adjoining it. The property was bought in 1950 to be used as an art gallery. With the house undergoing conservation and restoration, there is now a dedicated art gallery. The whole being the Mildura Arts and Cultural Precinct. The house is a delight to explore as there are only a handful of other sticky noses tourists here. A grand dining room with timbered ceiling, Italian marble and intricate stained-glass windows, there once was a sprung floor under the ballroom down in the basement. It’s easy to imagine what life must have been here when this home was the centre of everything that would come to be this vibrant city of 57,000.

There’s a building on Deakin Avenue* that has intrigued me so ditching my car around the corner I look for a spot to get a photo of The Mildura Club. As it would happen the perfect spot is at the foot of a statue to old W.B. himself.

We have new neighbours, a young family from WA’s Pilbarra region who are moving to Qld’s Sunshine Coast. Blimey, they’re going to notice a difference. They’re currently excited about green grass.

*Continuing the Chaffey Brothers story, it was parliamentarian and later Prime Minister Alfred Deakin who was sent to Ontario, California to see the irrigation system that had been developed by the Chaffeys. Subsequently they were brought out to continue their work here in Mildura and in Renmark, a little further downstream in South Australia. Hence the main street of Mildura was named Deakin Avenue in his honour.

Accom: $32.00