Mildura

Our road trip from Geelong to Mildura last Tuesday was all new territory for us: 6 hours of driving, bypassing Ballarat, then through Avoca, a good bakery visit at St Arnaud, then kilometres of tough dry flat Mallee country before arriving in the river port town of  Mildura  in far NW Victoria.

We stayed at the beautiful property of Rod's friends Kev and Julie in Mildura. This was our first sight of their back garden - on the banks of the tranquil Murray River.

 The view from their houseboat - Tuesday afternoon.......

 I got the shot of the rower, but missed getting the shot of the pelicans in flight.

 A view of Kev and Julie's house from the houseboat...

 Wednesday morning view of the river .....

 These beautiful, ancient River Red Gums line the banks of the Murray. The bark on this one was cut for canoe making by the local Aboriginal people - how many hundreds of years ago?

 The Art Vault in Mildura is Julie's passion project. We were fascinated by our personal tour of this amazing gallery and its state of the art print workshops, studios and artists' residences.

 These enormous palms are quite a feature of the Mildura streetscapes .....

 The historic old Grand Hotel is now owned by the Carrazza family. It's a real landmark in the centre of town - and has quite the L.A. vibe with those palm trees and its Art Deco era detailing.

 We had a wonderful dinner at the iconic Stefano's which is in the former underground cellars of the old hotel. Social distancing meant it was a very quiet night at the normally buzzy restaurant, but the set menu meal was wonderful.

 The parklands along the river are extensive in this town but seeing the workings of the locks up close made us much more aware of the water management issues along this mighty (but depleted) river.

 We were so lucky to be invited to the last lunch cruise on Kev and Julie's houseboat on Saturday. It's being sold ...... and this was Julie's last chance to steer the boat out of its moorings and head upstream along the river ......

 These boats are harder to steer than you'd think......

 Another amazing lunch - all cooked in the houseboat kitchen (there's no roughing it on this boat!)

 The boat was moored at a wild spot on the river while we enjoyed lunch - it was so tranquil, with bird life all around us.

 There are some beautiful properties along the river. This house is a bit of a standout - it belongs to the Carrazza family (of Grand Hotel and Stefano's fame).

 Kev and Julie must have had very mixed feelings on this happy day. The houseboat has brought them many happy times and good memories.

They were wonderful warm and generous hosts for our Mildura stay. We would love to come back now we know more of its charms - and heard of more trips we could do (relatively) near by!