Out and about

 Friday David has an appt with the Neuro Dr up in Ballarat, two hours driving through the countryside as opposed to sometimes nearly 3 hours driving to the city to see him at his city offices.

We decided to go Thursday and stay overnight. I wanted to do a bit of geocaching ( David was not so keen) 😀. There is another part of geocaching I have recently discovered called Adventure Labs. You need to find 5 or 6 places using the gps, when you get near you are asked a question and have to find the answer. Could be the date of a building or the last 3 words on a sign, something like that.

So on our way to Ballarat we stopped at Rokewood for a cuppa and did the adventure lab, we drove around the spots and it took about 30 mins.

an old house in the main street

main street, deserted houses

House on the main street again, Rokewood has a population of about 217 people. Rokewood started out as a creek crossing place, gold wasn't discovered here until 1853.

I assumed this was a gold finding town because of the huge church, but then lots of small townships around Victoria have one or more churches from the 1800's.

Next stop was still in Rokewood but at the reservoir

The reflections were beautiful, I could have sat here for a while just looking

only he ducks paddling made a ripple on the water

This was the first glimpse of the reservoir from the car

from here we went up the road to the cemetery

This would have been an interesting place to spend more time too, there was a large pioneer section and some very old graves up the back.

Onwards we went and the next stop was Smythesdale Cemetery, they have information plaques about the women pioneers in the area, one woman was a suffragette and had only female pallbearers at her funeral, it was considered outrageous at the time. Sadly she dies at only 49 years of age.

Not an interesting photo is it!! There was a cold wind howling through here so we didn't dally.

Our final stop for the day was Ballarat, again a very cold wind was blowing. We did two Adventure Labs in the Botanic Gardens, one following statues:

From the City of Ballarat Newsletter

The Stoddart Collection

A goldfields miner turned local stockbroker, Thomas Stoddart bought 12 white marble statues during a visit to Carrara in Italy in 1882 and gifted them to the Ballarat Botanical Gardens.

Stoddart arranged for them to be shipped to Victoria and placed on pedestals of Sicilian marble and on bases of Victorian granite.

The Carrara marble statues are all figures from classical mythology – Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, Hercules, Pomona, Bacchante, Hebe, Flora Farnese, Leda, Mercury and Flora.

The statues were unveiled in the gardens on Queen Victoria’s birthday, 24 May 1884. Stoddart’s intention was for the statues to adorn and add interest to the gardens.

Today, scattered throughout the gardens, they do exactly that.

We finished the Adventure Lab in a bit less that 30 mins and then to make David's day there was another one to do , this time around the statues of Australian Prime Ministers

Julia Gillard was Prime Minister from 2010 to 2013 and was the first and only female prime minister in Australia.

One of the entrances to the Gardens.

We finished this AL in record time and were happy to get back to the car and get warm.

We found our way to the motel and settled David in and then I went off to do another two AL's along the Ballarat Avenue of Honour.

The arch at the beginning of the Avenue of Honour

Beautiful reflection pool

these scooters were along the road I was walking on, apparently they are to encourage people to scoot into the city instead of using their cars. I wasn't game to try one 😶

I have had photos of these boards on here before, I had to stop at these boards and answer a question relating to the information on them. And that completed my adventuring for the day. We had a rough nights sleep as the man in the motel unit next to us apparently locked himself out, he got the other neighbours out by kicking on the door, they rang the motel owners who let him back in, he then proceeded to shout, swear and throw things for the next few hours. I was very thankful when he finally settled down. 

After David's appointment the next day we headed back home, we stopped for lunch at a place called Bunjil's Lookout, a place we have passed may times but not stopped at, and guess what, there was a cache there 😄 I quickly found it while David was eating lunch.

It was windy and cold here but the out look was stunning.

The look out is made in the shape of an eagle, I have found an explanation

 Bunjil the eagle (or eaglehawk) is a creator deity, culture hero and ancestral being. In the Kulin nation in central Victoria he was regarded as one of two moiety ancestors, the other being the trickster Crow.

There were interesting carvings here

It felt like you could look out for ever form here.

Back home there was an email from Chooky saying there was a zoom with the Scrub Stitching ladies so I joined in for a short time, as always it was lovely to catch up with these ladies. 

Saturday was Guild day, our speaker was Leslie Edwards from Quilting Fabrications

I bought the kit to make this scroll

Leslie dyes fabrics, mostly fabric she gets from op shops, she does all kinds of dying and has some interesting fabrics as a result. She was a very interesting speaker.

Today is Sunday and I am off upstairs to set my machine up in the kitchen bench.

Happy stitching.