The Victorian Goldfields

G'day Mates,
Did you share my blog in order to save Bali?? I wonder........


Yes, we have started our trip to Western Australia .....

Of course I am way behind, at this moment we are in Port Lincoln and I have to catch up a lot, so lets get started;

This is what I wrote on the 9th of January......


We said family and friends goodbye and from Newborough we are now winding our way through the Baw Baw shire towards Bendigo where we will be for a few days. The weather is perfect for driving, overcast and approx. 22 degrees. We're coming through little places like Willow Grove, Powelltown etc.

Movie time;

We stopped at the Gums Camp ground at Kinglake National Park which was in my bible. Coming there a sign said we had to book and there was a phone number which I called. Luckily we were still on the road and hadn't gone in yet as the men said, when he already gave me a site number, that it costs $ 37.80!! There is no water, no shower, no electricity just toilets!! Of course we know that these facilities are not there in a national park but to pay THAT money for it!! No way! So I told the men we'd rather go to a caravan park.

Looking back into my bible I saw something else coming on our path and that was Murrindindi scenic reserve so we went there. Look at this great spot, plenty room available, nice and quiet, lot of wildlife and only $ 7.00 to put in the honesty box.

Though the sky was dark around us and we heard thunder in the distance,  we just had a bit drizzle. Next day we packed and went towards Bendigo.

Arriving in Bendigo we went to a little caravan park which was flooded the day before when we were at that scenic reserve where we only had drizzle.
Because the forecast was bad for a few days we decided to stay at the caravan park before going into the bush to do our "bush walking with benefits". (Wonder what that means hey!)

When we just were emigrated to Australia and we thought our house would sell in the near future, we have been cruising around in Victoria to sort out where we wanted to live and one of these places was Bendigo. Because we then have seen Bendigo from properly, we didn't bother this time. BUT Bendigo is worth visiting and in those days I also made a weblog, the only thing is, its in Dutch. So if you are interested in Bendigo, just go to;

 http://tamfredinkangarooland.blogspot.com.au/2009/04/cultuur-ja-of-nee.html

also Bendigo has a lot of old style houses still; to see them just go to;

http://tamfredinkangarooland.blogspot.com.au/2009/04/misverstand.html



Now we have arrived in the greater Bendigo National Park on a free camp and as usual the camp spot is great, long drop toilets are available.
Today's it Wednesday the 14th of January and we had our first bush walking, but no benefits. (Still don't now??) Ah well one day we will have luck! More important is not to get bitten by a snake, I've got bitten by an ant and my god THAT HURTS!! Danny, our son knows, you remember Dan, Yamba!

There are more people here running around with a detector, maybe I should ask them if they found gold already and where haha, they won't tell!

Actually we are also very curious to know how long our new equipment, you know the second battery, will last and how long we can stay now with our own power? I'll let you know.

So, now in the meantime we are on that free camp 3 1/2 days, I've got back pain, actually pain over my whole body and blisters in my hands and look what I've gathered!

 Everyone here on the camp ground has found gold (Ah, does a bell ring?), some small and some quite nice ones! Of course I know I'm not experienced enough but still, my God someone found a nugget behind the toilet of all places !! Fred had put a bottle of bubbles in the fridge to celebrate my first found piece, not iron but proper gold! We had to take it out today and put it back under the bed, the bottle is too big for that little caravan fridge, so annoying.

But it's not all bad, we met a nice couple and because Fred doesn't like to come detecting (Yes, that's it) and he doesn't also like me going on me own, I was very glad they asked me if I would like to come with them and so I did. I also learnt a lot from him, his name is Hans, and I'm very thankful for that!  Ah well, maybe I've got more luck next time. AND, look at this, that's all on our front yard, what else do you want!

After the Bush adventure we were desperate for a shower and so we went to a caravan park in Maryborough and ooooohhh that shower was lovely!! I booked for a week because I also wanted to recover a bit from all the digging and I also wanted to work on my blog so we needed Internet too.

The blogs I was working on were the Bali ones.

A very nice caravan park in Maryborough, the one on the end of the Town, near the lake...

Even the Daltons were there to greet us....

Family of us wanted to see how prospecting (Gold digging) works so they came over for a day to come with us into the bush because Maryborough too is in the middle of the Victorian Goldfields.......

We had a very lovely day, nice lunch in the bush and dinner together, but no luck again.

Besides prospecting we also did a bike ride and we passed a few nice things in Maryborough;

The railway station

Very busy!! Haha, there are two trains leaving in the early morning....

A school....

The first part of the tour was very nice, through the bus and along paddocks 

We even passed an old goal......

Picture this, it's Wednesday the 21 rst of January, we went out to do some diggings again.  Suddenly my detectors produced a noise of which I found exciting and so Fred, he wanted to come with me this time, started digging. We swapped with digging and we dug deeper and deeper......

  Then the sound became weaker and we started to investigate the dirt what came out of the hole. The dirt in Fred's hand was beeping and it kept beeping even when he didn't had any dirt in his hands anymore.

I knew my hubby has golden hands but that the detector would ever prove it!!!!

I can tell ya, we were exhausted!!

Our neighbours at the caravan park, on the one side a couple, and on our other side a man on his own who also is in the prospecting business, were always curious if we would bring some shining yellow stuff home and waited every day for us with curiosity, unfortunately!

On the day we left, our male neighbour, John is his name, felt so sorry for me he made me this as a goodbye present;

OK Mates, that was it for now!

By the way, in the mean time we found out that we at least can camp free for 6 days, as long as the sun keeps shining and its not too hot. I think we could even do more!

Cheers!

Help Saving Bali!

Sorry Mates it took so long but I didn't had Internet for 1 1/2 week! and that was hard, really hard when you are addicted haha.


Anyway, as you already would have expected, this is a very different Bali story then the previous ones.

Besides the very beautiful places and scenery's I showed you with my pictures and movies, I also have to show you the other side of Bali which isn't so nice.

Please look at the movie and when you think there has to be something done about this, please share my blog then maybe someone will wake up! At least we can hope for it.

It would be an illusion to think this is only in Bali because I know the same situation occurs in whole Indonesia and a lot more other countries, but these people live from tourism and when they don't change their attitude about the environment, they will sooner or later end up with nothing.

In one of my stories you have seen me snorkelling, as long as you look down to the beautiful fish, there is nothing wrong but as soon as you look to the surface you see you are surrounded by all sorts of plastic rubbish, such a waste!

Sorry to end the Bali series like this but it has to be told.

See you soon, back in Australia and, as you can remember, going to the West!!

Cheers!!

Bali, Sidemen

G,day Mates!

The place of this story is Sidemen, the village it self isn't worth coming for but the surrounding is magnificent. Actually it is not a real attraction on Bali and the reason we came here had to do with Ubud, a very popular place.

Approx. 17 years ago, of course we still lived in the Netherlands, we both had good jobs so we did a lot of travelling (yes, also in the past), we went with Djoser, a travel agent, with a group to Indonesia and also Bali. We stayed a few days in Ubud and had a great time. Now we went to Ubud with the Tari family because a family member lives there where they had to go and we had some time to explore Ubud. Well for us Ubud wasn't Ubud anymore, much too crowded and busy and we decided not to go there what we actually were planning to do.

Then Elly said, "if you want to experience the same old Bali it use to be, then maybe Sidemen is something for you", and so we did. Just feel the pictures!!

So from Amed we went to Sidemen and this is our "resort", called "Sawah Indah Villa";

Restaurant were we had breakfast in the morning....

or a beer in the afternoon....

A little movie of the place;

The swimming pool....

Can you imagine that we paid approx. $ 135.00 (Eur. 95.-) for this for three nights, including breakfast !!

There is not much to do and Sidemen is not at all tourist attraction but you can do a guided walk through the rice paddies and actually we were planning to do that but....... maybe I ate a bit too spicy and I didn't dare to do that walk as I wanted to stay a bit near a toilet as you know what I mean pfffff.

But we did our own little walk and the surrounding is just amazing, look at what we all passed;

We also passed people working very hard, sometimes you wonder if they can't do it simpler;

these women are filling buckets with sand and not just to the rim, no with a huge hump, must be very, very heavy....

and then they walked these steps up to a temple, isn't this amazing.....

And then I made a little film of women who were very busy with rice, unfortunately I thought I was filming a cutting woman and at the time I thought I stopped filming, I actually started the film so there is a little producing mistake; I could have cut it out though but I just show you a bit.....

(don't laugh!)

 

Picture this, we are sitting on our veranda in front of our little cottage, the surrounding rice paddies normally bright green (see below's view) are now covered by the black sky. We are just minding our own business listening to a free concert of frogs, grasshoppers and what more thing we couldn't see when a bright green grasshopper jumps up and lands on Fred's glasses, playing who is watching who.

When something like that would have happen to one us in the past, we would have screamed our heads off but hey, living in Australia for 6 years with all these creepy, dangerous, scary crawlers around we have become real tough! Isn't that amazing!

Our view during day time;

After Sidemen, totally relaxed, we went back to Sanur for the last few days. We just wanted to be on the beach, reading books, watching people, having nice meals and in that all, we succeeded....

Cute isn't he!!

Enjoy the last few hours on the beach of Sanur;

My next story will be the last one of Bali and I'm sorry to say, you won't like it!

Curious?? Just wait and see....

Cheers!