Mildura - A family holiday covering 2 states

[JessicaTam]

Mr Rainbow spotted a marker which indicated that underneath where we stood, was the fibre optic cable which transmits internet traffic between Melbourne and Adelaide.

Adelaide and Sydney perhaps?

 

[rainbowgirl]

I knew I was going to get something about that detail wrong when I put it in the trip report. I just checked with Mr Rainbow and you are correct. It should be Adelaide and Sydney.

Mr Rainbow is a computer person and has been working with the internet for a long time. Long before most people had access to it. That's why he knows these sort of things. I used to have a good memory for details but now I'm losing track of things.

 

[rainbowgirl]

We've had some issues with out network for the last few days so I haven't been able to post anything to the thread. At some point I'm going to write a long winded tale about a long winded road named Benetook Ave but I haven't got time to do that tonight.

In the meantime I'll post a few photos of Hudson's Circus which just happened to arrive in town while we were there.

 

[rainbowgirl]

 

[rainbowgirl]

Don't try shooting an arrow like this at home. The trapeze artists were brilliant but it was difficult to get a clear photo when they were moving so fast.

 

[rainbowgirl]

You could pay for a photo with the macaws at interval but we decided not to.

The clown encouraged audience participation.

The lighting wasn't very good on the jumping castle but the girls enjoyed it anyway.

 

[rainbowgirl]

More paddle steamers, pelicans and ducks coming soon.

 

[rainbowgirl]

Before I go onto paddle steamer/Lock 11 day, I'll give you the brief version of the Benetook Ave story.

We decided to get tickets to the circus at the box office on the morning of the performance. The signs around Mildura said the circus would be in Benetook Avenue at the TAFE college. This is fine for the locals who knew where Benetook Ave was on the grid but no good for the visitors to the area. We were having trouble getting a data connection on our phones so we let the car GPS system (where the maps are out of date) figure out where we were going. Mr Rainbow thought Benetook Ave was part of the grid and we made it to within 2 blocks of the grid section of Benetook avenue before we let the GPS take control.

We know that we can't always rely on the GPS, even when it is up to date. Mr Rainbow likes exploring new places so when we ended up in the wrong place he still wanted to take a look around and see what there was to see. The GPS took us to a section of Benetook Ave near the Murray River. It was mostly fields and a little bit of industrial sites. There was no sign of a TAFE college or a circus. We had a look at the map on the GPS and found several other sections of Benetook Avenue, but not all of them were in the same allignment which is what created the problem in the first place. They were all connected but it was difficult to drive from one end of the road to the other. A phonecall to the Circus Box Office cleared up some of the problems but given that the staff weren't locals either it was still a bit confusing.

We eventually found the TAFE but no sign of the circus. Mr Rainbow drove into the entrance of the TAFE and we explored the various roads, gardens and buildings as we drove by. We eventually saw the Big Top but had to exit back out onto Benetook Ave and go further down before we were able to stop at the Box Office. We looked at the various seating levels and chose our tickets. We had to find a compromise between good views and reasonable costs. I haven't been to a circus in many years but the ticket prices have risen a great deal since I last visited.

Later I looked up how long Benetook Avenue. The street starts up near the river, dog legs, then becomes part of the main Mildura town grid. Once it leaves the grid it goes further south and then winds around all over the place before ending in the middle of what looks like farmland with a dam. I'm glad we didn't end up at the other end of Benetook Avenue when we began our search for the Circus. We used a much quicker route to the circus in the evening and left plenty of time to enjoy the side shows before the circus acts entered the arena.

Okay, that wasn't exactly brief but it could have been a lot longer.

 

[rainbowgirl]

This is a close up of the Sewing machine from the historical village. I'm guessing the Benetook family were one of the early farming families in the area.

 

[rainbowgirl]

The Benetook story was supposed to start with a joke but I forgot to include it.

As we were leaving our unit my husband said something along the lines of "We have to find Benetook". I misheard him and thought he was talking about a character out of "Lord of the Rings."

 

[rainbowgirl]

The ducks were the first ones to greet us as we visited the gardens around Lock 11 and Lock Island.

 

[rainbowgirl]

The paddle steamer Melbourne has arrived at Lock 11.

 

[GarrettM]

Rather enjoying this. As mentioned previously it's not all about premium cabins and far-flung destinations. Plenty of people love relatable, ACCESSIBLE holidays.

 

[JessicaTam]

Good ol' Lock 11. The only part of the Murray in Victoria.

 

[rainbowgirl]

Miss 7 knows what a lock is. She had fun with a computer game which showed how locks work and she knew which buttons to press in order for the water to go in and out and allow the boat to use the next part of the river with a different water level. Miss 12 remembered going through the lock last time we were in Mildura. Miss 7 doesn't remember going through the lock but she had fun describing how a lock works to Miss 12. I'm not very good at technical descriptions and explaining things clearly so I'm just going to quote from another website.

Lock 11 and Mildura Weir - Mildura's Chaffey Trail

"Lock 11 & Mildura Weir
Weirs and locks have been an important way of regulating the Murray River's water supply for many years.

Before settlement, the Murray River ebbed and flowed and sometimes flooded or dried up completely. Its lack of reliability caused problems for early settlers, who relied on the river for transporting cargo such as wheat, wool, wine grapes and citrus to market.

George Chaffey was the first person to see the river's irrigation potential, describing it as a 'river of life'. In 1887 a paddle steamer carrying WB Chaffey moored at the Murray's bank and 500 men were working in the town a year later.

River traffic declined with the opening of the railway in 1903 but the river's depth and health were foremost in people's minds. In 1914, the Commonwealth, Victoria, New South Wales and South Australian governments signed an Agreement to manage the river's waters by building locks, weirs and storage areas. Construction of the Mildura Weir began in August 1923 with the aims of raising both the water level and the pressure from the Mildura and Red Cliffs irrigation pumps. Lock 11 was completed in 1927.

Did you know?

• The difference between the river levels upstream and downstream of the Weir is normally 3.6 metres
• The river steamer PS Canally was first to pass through the lock on 2 August 1927
• The Mildura Weir system is the only site on the River Murray where a lock and weir are separated by an island."

There's lots of other interesting info and photos on the website as well.

The PS Melbourne is the only paddle steamer in Mildura which is powered by a steam engine.

 

[rainbowgirl]

Closed gates, water coming out of the lock, paddle steamer gets lower compared to surroundings, gates start to open, once gates fully opened paddle steamer moves out. Look at that steam. I had no idea my photos would show it so clearly.

If I can find my photos from the last Mildura trip, I'll post a few of the steam engine. It's very impressive.

 

[rainbowgirl]

I couldn't get the exact angle and distance but here are some before and after photos. Look at the level of the paddle wheel in each to see how much lower in the water it is compared to the first photo.

 

[rainbowgirl]

I'm still learning how the photo editor works on my phone. I touched up the colour on these images. For some reason they got stored in a different order when I went looking for them. As I mentioned earlier in this thread I'm learning lots of new things about what I can do by creating this trip report.

We spent so long in the gardens and on the island that we watched the PS Melbourne returning through the lock and heading back to the port. We watched it from the island side this time.

 

[rainbowgirl]

Anyone know what the little bird with the yellow beak is? More about various birds in the next update.

 

[RB]

View attachment 118976
Anyone know what the little bird with the yellow beak is? More about various birds in the next update.

I am guessing a Noisy Miner