Bendigo

Fri 6 March originally we were disappointed to only get one night here but as we are camped between the families from hell with their hoardes of kids rampaging about until after 10 at night,we are glad to be on the move. all the grey nomads are packing up and leaving making way for families to arrive for the holiday weekend. Chatting to a couple next door who are moving for the same reasons as us,said we would struggle to find a camp site on the banks of the Murray so we are heading off to Bendigo another town famous for it's gold producing past. it's only about 100K and so after a bit of shopping in Echuca and a coffee on the way,we are in Bendigo before lunch. as we have plenty of time we drive into the city and immediately get confused. There are TRAMS! We always seem to be on tram lines when we shouldn't be. We drive around and can't find anywhere to park so ...sod it... we head out of town again and have lunch by a lake. We have a walk round it later,nothing spectacular but there were terrapins in it.By now itis time to clock in at the "Gold Nugget Holiday Park" TRUE!!!!!! Anyway it seem O K and we are here for 2 night until we head back to the Murray again.
Next morning we had a bit of a lie in (half an hour) due to a late night.We have a brilliant Wifi connection and it's free so we are makng the most of it, Uploading photos,emails and generally making up for lost time.Will blog tonight. After tonight we will be glad to move on as the site has filld up and has become as busy as Echuca. There is a constant stream of kids wizzing past on bikes as we sit outside . It seems we are on the main highway to the swimming pool.Spent the morning doing not much and then bit the bullet and set off again to Bendigo. Managed to get tangled up with traffic going to the athletic stadium, and ended up in the bowls club car park so once again aborted the mission and parked by the lake.Thats when we got our own back on the trams and caught one back into town. Not your ordinary trams these, but Talking Trams!A running recorded commentary,including such highlights as the old gasworks and the tram depot.Went all the way to the central gold mine which closed in 1954, didn't do the tour.Walked around central Bendigo and saw pretty much all there is to see, but the talking tram does all that so we may as well have stayed on it.Getting back to the van we hopped back on the tram, but it sailed straight past our stop and didn't stop until it reached the terminus where there is a Chinese Joss House. We didn't do the tour. We managed to persuade the driver to stop at the lake on the return journey or we could have been going backwards and forwards all day! Back at the Gold Nugget it is bursting at the seams. Not very tranquil but at least we can get up to date with the blog. One post went but just as we got the final 2 days written the system crashed and we lost it. HUH!