Australia 2019 – Day 5 – Horsham-Bendigo-Wangaratta

I wanted to go east, with the idea of visiting the Alpine National Park and the Snowy River National Park, but all the streams run north to south in this region, and thus there are no through-going west to east roads. So I decided to go north across the Great Divide, where I could both follow the edge of the high desert to the east, and take a glimpse at the Australian outback. Oh, disappointment. The area behind the great divide is indeed a high plateau, but it is a green and fertile agricultural area that has nothing to do with “the outback”.

For the benefit of DJ, who likes to follow my route in Google Earth, the “big” towns along the way are Horsham, Bendigo, Wangaratta.

Between Horsham and Bendigo the ground is pretty flat, but not quite laser-leveled, so I wonder how they irrigate it? Seems like perfect land for pivots, but I saw none. It cannot be flood-irrigated because it is not truly flat, and I didn’t see any sort of sprinklers. Could it be that they rely on seasonal rainfall? There are thousands upon thousands of acres here, and if they rely on seasonal rainfall it is no wonder that a year or two of decreased rainfall wreck havoc on ag production.

Bendigo was the epicenter of a gold rush sometime in the late 1800’s, although I am having a hard time trying to figure out where the gold was found. Placer gold in the valley floor?

From Bendigo to Wangaratta the road crosses through a beautiful country of green hills and sunny groves of eucalyptus. It reminded me a lot of The Shire in New Zealand. (Incidentally, I very much miss Anna, my stalwart companion in the New Zealand trip). This is the ultimate sheep country, so on every field you see little cotton puffs dotting the hills. I also saw a rather weird flock of  white … wait a minute … those are not sheep. They were a group of over one hundred white cockatoos who were browsing the grass, just like so many sheep!

After Wangaratta I turned south, toward the Alpine National Park, and promptly left behind the sunny shire to immerse myself in the gloomy, rainy weather of the mountains. It had been a long drive, and I was looking forward to finding a place for the night. I have decided that, fun as it is trying to camp in the great outdoors, the AUS$25 I pay at caravan parks are totally worth in terms of having a kitchen and dining room, bathrooms, and wi-fi, particularly when it is raining. My resting place for the night is Myrtleford.

For the record, today I burned through my first AUS$500, and clocked my first thousand kilometers on the van.