A Monster birthday

After a fantastic weekend and a beautiful wedding, we said good bye to all our friends and left Nyora. We made a quick stop back home to help Tonia and Cam load up a moving truck. Paid a surprise visit to mum and dad, had a quick cuppa and headed north (finally!) to Bendigo.

As we arrived into town there was a huge monster truck on the back of an even bigger truck advertising the Monster Truck Show. The kids got very excited and we couldn’t believe our luck when we pulled up at the Bendigo showgrounds, and discovered that the Monster Truck show was being held at the Showgrounds the next weekend.

We spent the week exploring Bendigo. We decided that Bendigo is a really nice town. It has all you need from a small city but a few kilometres out of town and you can really enjoy the country life.

We got to catch up with friends who moved from Melbourne to Bendigo a few years ago. Leonie and Scott are living about 30ks out of town on a nice big block of land. They have three boys and all the kids got along really well together.

Since our time spent in the Outback last year, Will has had a dream of owning a horse one day.  However, he has never even sat on a horse before! It was great to see the excitement on his face when he got to have a ride on Leonie’s horse. He enjoyed it almost as much as he enjoyed racing around the block on their ATV Gator!

Bendigo is famous for their talking-tram tours. It was a great way to see the city and all of its beautiful old buildings.

Another thing Bendigo is known for is all the gold that has been mined there. We spent and afternoon going on a tour of the Central Deborah Mine. Going down the 60 metre deep mine, we heard all about how the mine got its name, and how Bendigo discovered it’s hidden secret.

The Legend of Lady Deborah.

Late in the 18^th century, an English lord became penniless when his roguish elder brother gambled away the family fortune and estates, and then took to the high seas as a pirate.

With nothing more than his title, the lord migrated to Australia to try and strike it rich on the goldfields, so that he might return to England and reclaim his family estates.

The lord arrived at the Sandhurst (Bendigo) goldfields, set up camp and immediately began his search for the elusive material. As time went by and the lord made several quite possible strikes, he began to suspect that a rich reef of gold ran under the township. Although other miners scoffed at his suspicions, claiming that all the reefs in the area had been discovered, the lord became obsessed with finding the reef.

The only person who believed the lord was a young dancer with Lola Montez’ chorus line. Deborah was strikingly beautiful, possessed of a sparkling smile, laughing eyes and a charm which entranced all who met her. It was love at first sight for the lord when he saw her at a Lola Montez show. He courted her and won her heart.

The lord’s burning desire to find the reef of gold was the only thing that exceeded his passion for Deborah. He refused to marry her until he could keep her in the manner he would wish. He wanted to reclaim his title and make her his Lady Deborah. Hence, he referred to the elusive reef as Deborah’s reef.

Working feverishly night and day the lord became very ill. He drove himself onward, consumed by his burning ambition to find the reef. Deborah begged him to cease his quest and save his health but he continued. Deborah has taken to keeping a vigil at the top of the mine shaft while the lord worked below.

One bleak day, the lord failed to return to the surface, and an extremely worried Deborah persuaded some miners to descend the mine and search for him. They found the lord dead with a large gold nugget in his hand. In the wall of the tunnel where he had begun digging they could see clearly a gold reef.

Deborah was overcome with grief and refused to leave the site of the mine. For two days she huddled piteously by the mine shaft. Sometime during the second night she vanished. Police and miners searched the mine and surrounding area but to no avail.

Legend has it that Deborah disappeared into the mine and to this day has protected the mine and all those who enter it.

Over the years miners often reported sighting a mysterious woman.

 

We had planned on staying at the Showgrounds for a week but discovered that camping was not allowed when the Monster Truck show was on. The company running the show had booked out the whole venue for the weekend. However, I managed to sweet-talk the guy calling the shots. We had already brought tickets for the show and as long as we moved our caravan to the back of the showgrounds, we were allowed to stay there for the weekend.

My mum and dad came and joined us for the weekend to help celebrate my birthday. We spent the day of my birthday at the botanical gardens. We had a picnic lunch on the grass, and then the kids had fun playing in the playground.

That night was the Monster Truck Show. We had all become very familiar with the trucks after watching them practise outside of caravan all week. It was great fun seeing them in action and Dan, Sam and Will even got to have a ride on the back of one of the trucks.
 

The show was followed by a fantastic fireworks display!

When travelling with kids, we are always on the lookout for other families on the road. During the next couple of days 4 families arrived at the showgrounds.

The kids are all instantly drawn to each other and form very close bonds almost immediately. It is also really nice for us to get to talk to other parents. We get to ‘vent’ a bit about the struggles that come with travelling with kids. As wonderful as it is, it can be quite challenging to be living in each other back pockets 24 hours / 7 days a week. It is refreshing to find that all travelling parents feel the same and it’s great to compare notes and share advice.

We became close to one particular family who have been on the road for about 3 months. The kids all loved playing together and Nikki and I spent a lot of time talking about the challenges of schooling the kids, over a couple of glasses of wine.

We got a bit of work done on the car while we were in Bendigo. One of the main things was getting a weight distribution kit installed on the car and van. People we have met on the road were really surprised that we didn’t already have one installed. Up until recently we have been carrying a lot of weight in the caravan. The caravan always sat really well on the road, but since we have got our weight sorted out, the van has been really difficult to tow.

We now have a Weight Distribution Kit on the van and hopefully that will fix the problem!

Losing weight is never easy!

We stayed at mum and dads for a few days to try to sort out our weight issue. After doing serious damage to the clutch of our new car, we recently had the caravan weighed and it was over a tonne over weight!

We unpacked EVERYTHING out of the van and filled up mum and dad’s garage. We then took the caravan to the weigh bridge to get it weighed. It was a lot heavier than the manufacturer had stamped on the compliance plate. So we made a phone call to the manufacturers and they offered to re-stamp the plate.

We still had a big clean out of the van, because even with the new weight allowance, we were still carrying too much. We left behind a lot of things that would be missed, but we needed to make sure that the van was not only at a safe weight, but that we wouldn’t do more damage to the car.

Once we re-packed the car and caravan we got them weighed again. We had successfully lost over 500kg of weight!!! If only it was that easy to lose the extra weight I am carrying around my middle!!

We made our way east to the Gippsland region. Our friends were getting married at Nyora on the weekend and we decided to head down that way a bit earlier and re-visit Loch. We began our trip last year and our first stop was the Memorial Reserve at Loch Village. We have some wonderful memories of Loch and wanted to begin our trip there again this year.

 

The people of Loch had made us feel so welcome when we were there last year and we were really happy to discover that they remembered us and were really keen to hear all about our adventures so far.

 

 

We left Loch and took the 15km drive along the South Gippsland Hwy to the Bells Park Scout Camp. Nicole and Sean had hired out the scout camp for the weekend and invited friends and family to camp there and help them celebrate their marriage.

I met Nic through my mother’s group when Sam was born. I am still really close to most of the mums from the group and up until we left on this trip, we still met up every week for a cuppa and to let the kids play.

Dan had already known Sean when they used to work together and we have all become very close to the other dads in the group.

The Bride getting ready

Two beautiful Flower Girls

The groom and his best man getting the gorgeous pageboy ready

Here comes the bride!

A good opportunity for a family photo - it's not often we get dressed up these days!

It was fantastic to get the chance to go camping with all our friends from Mum’s group. We had a great weekend, catching up, having a few drinks, letting the kids all play together and of course witnessing Nic and Sean tie the knot!

My mum's group - still great friends nearly 10 years later!

I spent a lot of the weekend talking to Tonia and Cameron about our trip. They have just bought a caravan and are starting their own trip around Australia later in the year. They have tenants moving into their house next week and are very excited about their upcoming adventure.