MARCH 22-29     HOME TO MARONG AND BACK (2)

We spent our week here exploring the Bendigo region, getting a feel for the areas we might like to live.

Bendigo began as the scene of gold rushes, in the 1850’s. Mining followed the creeks and gullies. Other facilities, such as police encampments, early shops, grew up around the mining areas, in an ad-hoc way. As the nature of the mining changed from the alluvial, easily found shallow gold to the deeper reef embedded gold, so the growing settlement became aligned to the NW-SE trend of the gold bearing reefs. Little “suburbs” emerged, separated by big tracts of mines and huge mullock heaps, amongst them Sailors Gully, California Gully, Long Gully, Ironbark, Golden Square, Kangaroo Flat, Deborah Triangle. Even today, most of the older suburbs of Bendigo have vacant ground between them, occupied by mining heaps and regenerated bushland around old mines.

The suburbs of Bendigo

The central business area of Bendigo grew apiece, north and east of the main mining areas, and with a more orderly layout. The massive wealth generated by gold mining is evidenced by the beautiful, ornate old buildings dating from the later 1800’s, that make the present day city centre so interesting.

In more recent times, there have been some housing estates built on infill sites in some of the older mining suburbs, like Golden Square, but mostly development has simply occurred on the outer fringes and moved progressively outwards, leapfrogging the old waste ground and pockets of State Forest. The effect of this is strangely attractive.

The newer, leafier outer suburbs appealed most. We wanted a modern house, for starters. Although there were housing developments close in, like in Golden Square, our preference was to avoid the areas that might sit on top of old mining tunnels. That was something we both agreed on, along with John’s need for a large shed, and a place to park the Bus.  Beyond that, we differed. John had visions of acreage, fruit trees, chooks, big vegie gardens, no neighbours within cooee. Suburban and manageable featured in my dreams.

That’s MY bed!

During the week we cruised in all directions around Bendigo, drove past some of the properties advertised in the local paper. We were debating whether to buy land and build, or purchase a pre-loved home, so visited a couple of estates and sets of display homes.

We even attended one Open for Inspection in the Maiden Gully suburb. We were the only attendees. I loved the modern, large, light-filled home, but there was only a small shed and no place to park Bus. However, the experience was instructional in that the lady owner was present through the whole time and clearly hampered the presentation of the place by the real estate agent, and made us feel quite self-conscious. After, we resolved that, when our place was being inspected, we would make ourselves totally scarce.

Despite that, we both liked Maiden Gully, which still had a “bushy” feel and where there were frequent sightings of pairs of Eastern Rosellas flying about.

Had a very pleasant meal one evening, with daughter and family, at the nearby Marong Hotel, which did really interesting food. Their Fishermans Basket was very generous – fish, a couple of prawns cooked in charcoal infused panko crumbs, scallops, the tenderest calamari, chips and salad. Delicious and more than I could eat. The pork belly pizza that another member of the group had was innovative, and, apparently, good eating.

One morning there was a really unusual and threatening cloud formation across the sky, not like anything I’d seen before.

Threatening sky over Marong

Eventually, there was a little rain.

Will it rain?

From the park location by the Calder Highway, what really stood out was the sheer volume of truck traffic. The park itself was set far enough back from the road for the traffic noise to be there in the background but not intrusive. At night, from Bus, we had an outlook across a paddock to the highway and the constant procession of lit-up semi trailer trucks. Yet, there was a railway line through Marong to parts north and west. In the week, we neither saw nor heard any rail traffic. This State so needs to re-examine its infrastructure priorities which seem to be almost exclusively focussed on Melbourne and building yet more freeways and tunnels for road traffic.

Overall, the week was useful in firming up some ideas and helping John realize the variety of localities of the city.