In and around Mildura

Fri 13 Mar That’s enough of that rain then It’s a lovely sunny morning just need to restock the fridge before we go off for the day. We didn’t intend to drive far as there is enough to see around Mildura. A few K’s down the Calder Highway and we are in grape growing country again. There seem to be more vines here than anywhere else we have been but apart from Lindemans and Trentham Estates, none of them are familiar. We have seen truck loads of grapes heading out of town, maybe they just grow them here and process them somewhere else and then just give them a name. We know McGuigans do it, they are based in Loxton S A but you can buy their locally produced wine in N S W that’s not very local.
We stop at Redcliff on the Murray which has a nice short board walk along the river to the red cliffs! Some very nice scenery spoilt a bit by dozens of electricity pylons. A more Ks and we are at Kings Bilabong, a wildlife reserve though it appears to have the same bird life as the rest of the river. As we make our way back to Mildura we see an orchard of bushes that we don’t recognise, we can see bunches of small orange coloured fruit hanging from the branches. Peter jumped out to have a look. They turn out to be nut trees, pistachios to be precise. Neither of us had any idea how they grew or what they looked like. They taste very nice straight from the tree as walnuts do when they are wet. They also grow almonds round here but we don’t know what they look like either. We follow the river through Mildura and stop for lunch at lock 11,the one we passed through yesterday. We watched river traffic going through the lock before going over the lock gate to the island on the other side. The footpath takes us to a weir where we watch pelicans and darters hunting for fish. A walk round the island where there is an example of Aboriginal art. It looks like a 3 humped tortoise. It’s very hot and quite humid and so the last bit of culture before happy hour, is a replica Pioneer Settlement and interesting for half an hour or so. A couple of reconstructed timber houses, stables with ancient tack lying around ,a coopers workshop and rusty old machines. At weekends there is more to see when they open the house and workshop.
Back at camp happy hour starts at 5 30, the camp owner puts on a few nibbles, it’s just like a Friday afternoon Merlot Moment! A few of us sat around chatting, quite interesting and we picked up a tips for our trip up north.