Rest Day – Mildura

For possibly no good reason I felt behind schedule and felt even worse about the rest day when the next morning I discovered how cool it was! I needed my fleece as I strolled to find breakfast. I found it and my microbes cheered as I treated them to muesli, yoghurt and fresh fruit!

However in the picture is one of my errors: the caffeinated coffee. (In the afternoon I attempted forty winks and I think this drug prevented sleep.) So after breakfast I ambled down toward the river where there was a Saturday market.

I’m sure the attendance was helped by the cool temperature. Mildura is a sizeable Victoria town with a lot of residential housing, The two big reasons it’s on the map are the fruit industry, which is vast, and employs many folk and attendant support services (and an armada of trucks ferrying the produce on the main highways.) The other draw is the Murray River that makes it quite a tourist spot. My Aussie pals from Barham (Barram!) were headed here and all the folk on my subsequent paddle boat jaunt were out of State tourists.

In the centre were many food outlets, in fairness nothing very upmarket, and regular shops such as supermarkets.

After a quick look at the stalls, mainly of local crafts, I went to find my 19th Century paddle boat for a trip on the Murray River.

She’s now diesel but once was steam and plied her trade on the river hauling timber, today it’s tourists. We had a nice couple of hours going through a lock and cruising along the river before being disembarked.

I mooched about in the afternoon and avoid lots of steps and come 5pm, even though not particularly hungry, I found a restaurant for a pizza and fries. Food is fuel and then I found myself in bed falling asleep just after 7pm! I wanted a good sleep to achieve a catch up and to set me up for some long rides to Adelaide. I was still concerned about the heat and the difficulty of getting to Adelaide with so few good camping or hotel stops. This was churning through my mind as I drifted off.

PS. I have been creating some social media to complement this drivel. My first wife studied my output and commented that my video and images with music was sufficient without my ‘talk’ videos. Nobody likes honesty do they…