Old Gold – A Lost Apostrophe – itchingforhitching

An amble through Victoria’s Goldfields region.

Day 1 Wednesday 8/10/2025 Home (Melbourne) to Riddells Creek, warm, grey clearing to 20 degrees

Whenever we need to go through the city, we usually try to get away on a weekend as the traffic is lighter and there are fewer trucks. Today the traffic on the Monash Freeway is pretty good. Passing the city on the elevated spaghetti that these roads are becoming, we loop around and over the Yarra River on the Bolte Bridge before picking up the Calder Highway and heading northwest. In all it only takes 90 minutes to get to the regional town of Gisborne where we meet Toothless and Mrs. Doubtfire with their new and rather long caravan.

Gisborne is looking gorgeous. The nature strips (verges) are a sea of yellow daisies as the spring Cape Weed is in flower. The trees are in full bloom and gardens are at their best. Woody does a quick dash for a loaf of fresh bread before we head on up the Kilmore Road to Riddells Creek and no, sorry to all the AI grammar and spell checkers, it seems that there isn’t an apostrophe to be found in this town.

With barely a glance at the township, we drive 2 kms up the hill to the Treetops Scout Camp. The caretaker checks us in and leads us down to the powered camping area. There are clean amenities a couple of sites away and we bring the total to 7 vans here for tonight. We’re surrounded by tracts of grassy areas and bushland. Looking at the ground, we can see that there’ll be plenty of kangaroos and rabbits visiting tonight.

The afternoon is spent sitting in the sun, catching up on the gossip and drooling over the features of the new JB caravan. Magpies are persistently asking for food, there are currawongs and maned ducks, while wrens flit about the lawn and New Holland honeyeaters dart about in the nectar filled grevillea bushes. Silver birds are above us, as we’re under the flight path and it seems that this afternoon Melburnians are off to Singapore. With no definite plans for this part of our trip we decide to head to Redesdale tomorrow. There’s a pub there and it has quite a reputation.