Grey Nomads: Brown Trails

Another few days on the road find us enjoyed yet another fine mix of culture, ancient history, and the inevitable 4WD rescue mission that keeps our egos firmly in check.

Shepparton: Inspections, Art, and Spam Evasion

We kicked off our Shepparton stint at the Australian Botanic Gardens, which are built on an old rubbish tip site. Naturally, instead of admiring the flora, Ken and Peter spent the first half-hour wandering around assessing the site like they were back at work, debating potential methane emissions and leachate risks. Once the engineering inspection was complete, Jo convinced Ken to try some wild apple berries off a bush. They are edible, but being completely out of season, they tasted awful. Kerrie also got her first photos of the Shepparton painted cows. Nearby Jo and Peter enjoyed a walk over a suspension bridge that was what “Brad’s Bouncy Bridge” in Mudgee should have been had it been designed right!

We next headed to the MOVE (Museum of Vehicle Evolution), which turned out to be an absolute cracker. Kerrie told us that she does not go to car museums in her travells usually and she was surprised at how much she enjoyed it. She spotted an old Willys Jeep, along with an old school bus that brought back some wild memories. Back in her school days, Kerrie’s bus caught fire, and while the bus driver calmly abandoned ship and walked into town to find help, Kerrie was left to evacuate all the kids off the burning vehicle. She and Ken were childhood sweethearts who spent some fun times in the Jeep on the beach in the central cost too. Jo was impressed with the museum’s truck collection and especially the large hanging murals telling the story of hardworking immigrant truck drivers who built up their business carrying fruit in the region.

MOVE also houses a great costume museum, a bicycle collection, and a big section on the local Furphy family. Poor John Furphy was a strictly upright, teetotaling, honest man who probably never told a lie in his life. Naturally, the universe rewarded him by turning his surname into national slang for a tall tale (thanks to the Furphy water carts in WWI), followed decades later by a brand of beer named in his honor. To make it worse his younger brother, Joseph Furphy wrote “Such is Life” but under the pseudonym Tom Collins so even that was not associated with his name.

To round off our cultural tour, we caught the Archibald Prize exhibition. When it came to voting for the People’s Choice award, Jo was the only one brave enough to put details on paper. Peter and Kerrie flatly refused, preferring to forgo their democratic rights rather than risk marketing emails for the next decade.

• Jo voted for the striking portrait of a Perth doctor who worked in Palestine.
• Peter was fascinated by a painting of a woman wrapped in red foil, rendered so realistically you felt you could peel it off.
• We also discovered that Ken was apparently a childhood prodigy at landscape painting—leaving us all wondering why on earth he gave it up for a lifetime of checking poor building sites and tip sites for methane leaks?

Yea: Fossils, Dump Points, and Drone Crashes

After Shepparton Ken and Kerrie started travelling home and Jo and Peter moved on to Yea (pronounced Yay), we spent some quality time around the wetlands. Highlights included:

• The “Water Education Centre”: Initially we found this place by accident. We thought that it was simply a suspiciously grand title for the local dump point (where we had to flush our caravan water filtration system yet again). We discovered that it was actually an amazing wetlands information centre, wetlands walks and visitor information centre all combined in one (that happened to have a dump point near the visitor information centre).
• The Audio Walk: the wetlands walk featuring a cable suspension bridge and impressive raised walking platforms that Peter especially admired given his work on Putta Butta wetlands in Mudgee. Jo was more impressed with a self-guided immersive audio tour (Daabani Biik Butganani Yanath) developed by the local Taungurung language keepers, story tellers and artists. Most of whom were descended from an Aboriginal man who had bought the wetlands in the late 1800s and raised his large family there. Remarkably, the audio timing matched our walking pace down to the second.
• Fossils: We managed to find actual fossils of Australia’s earliest land plants around the area as well. Actually they were not hard to find but were avaiable to see and touch just outside the visitor inforamation centre.

We also took a drive out to the old rail tunnel, which features some spectacular colorful molds growing across the historic brickwork. It became quite dark inside the tunnel, our drone refused to take footage any more and gave a stern warning: “Please fly in well-lit conditions.” Naturally, we ignored it, and crashed the drone into the dark two seconds later (don’t worry it is ok).

The Great Clay-tastrophie

For the past couple of nights, we’ve been staying at a brand-new HipCamp set high on a hill outside Yea with unreal views. It has rained quite a bit so Jo has been reading her mother’s book and working on her databases. Peter claims he is going to change his name formally to Data Base by deed poll but seemed to enjoy having time to watch “The Twelve” series. Our new hipcamp has one of those modern glamping pods on-site—very space-age from the outside. We have had the entire hilltop to ourselves felt like luxury.

Until it rained.

Deciding to head into town for lunch after a solid downpour, we started driving down the hill. We handled the grassy slope fine, but as soon as the tires hit the track—which the owner had only just freshly bulldozed—we hit wet clay.

Steering instantly became an abstract concept. Traction vanished, and momentum took over, sliding the 4WD sideways straight into a fence line.

The silver linings?

1. The owners were nearby and kindly came to the rescue on a tractor.
2. We got away with very few scratches on the car (you can’t really see them)
3. Peter finally got to use the car’s winch for a genuine recovery instead of just showing off in the driveway.
4. He also got to test out the car’s “crawl control” feature for the first time.

Once we winched ourselves free, we made it into town and found a pub (the Peppercorn Hotel). It was completely deserted—we were the only souls in the place—but they cooked a cracking meal and had a lovely atmosphere so we logged it as a success.

What’s Next?

We’re currently sitting back up on our hill, staring down at the greasy clay track and calculating the odds of making it down safely tomorrow. Assuming we don’t have another intimate meeting with the fence, the plan is to return the caravan for some repairs and head off to our next house sit.

Wish us luck getting down the hill!

Jo and Peter