Bendigo Gold

The sharp snap of the beak and the beat of the wings millimetres from my right ear shouldn’t have been such a surprise at this time of year - but the magpie that swooped from behind and took aim at me as we scootered to the Milawa Cheese Factory / Coffee shop for a morning coffee in glorious sunshine gave me quite a start. I was pleased I was wearing the bike helmet!

We had spied the Cheese Factory yesterday afternoon and decided it was worth a visit. Both the coffee and cheeses were very good, although 9.15am is a little early in the day for the palate to be sampling smelly, blue cheese.

We returned to the motel, packed up and headed the short distance back to the airfield. The plane was duly packed and the preflight preparations were completed, including a procedure not normally required at Bankstown - checking to make sure the runway was clear of wedding parties and photographers. . .

40 minutes after takeoff we landed at Bendigo, noting the greenness of the rich farmlands we flew over on the way. After refuelling and parking the plane, we shouldered our loads and scootered off to our motel in downtown Bendigo.
Being Sunday in a regional setting, many eating venues aren’t open, so Loss fired up the skillet and coffee machine in the motel room and a delicious lunch magically appeared in no time.
It was now time to head off to Bendigo’s No. 1 attraction - an underground mine tour of the ‘Central Deborah’ gold mine. Descending 61m below the surface we were taken on the tour by a ‘real’ miner who had worked as a FIFO miner in Western Australia for a number of years.
It was surprising to learn that Bendigo has produced approximately 3 times more gold than Ballarat, but the tourist attraction of Sovereign Hill gives the impression that Ballarat is the main gold producing town of Victoria. The tour was interesting and authentic.

After the tour, we checked out a few other places around this prosperous town before dinner at a Thai restaurant followed by streaming the Riverwood meeting from earlier today.

We had hoped to catch up with Phil and Jenny White who live in Bendigo but alas - when we contacted them yesterday, they told us they were down in Melbourne this weekend.Read more