We wake to the sound of raindrops. Milduras technically in the desert, so this wasnt part of the plan.
We drive along the riverbank past the same palatial houseboats that we saw in the half light last night, including one called Mungo Creek Rehab. I suppose if you needed rehab of some sort thered be plenty of worse places to do it. We stop for lunch at a cafe at the impressive and relatively new Mildura Marina, which is also lined with wall to wall houseboats.
The Marinas surrounded by mansions which look like they probably house the local No expense has been spared. The two palatial manors closest to the cafe have solar panels on their rooves. That wouldnt normally be worthy but what makes these ones stand out is that enclosed in netting. Im not sure Ive ever seen this before. We can only guess that the local billionaires might be a bit wary about a large flock of pelicans suddenly deciding to take roost and interrupting the power supply to their hot tubs.
the water, resulting in a tug of war between a duck and a school of carp. The carp seem to be winning, which is putting a slightly alarming new slant on the concept of fish and chips.
Its still raining, so we give up on the idea of more strolling and drive downstream to Apex Park, where theres an attractive sandy beach on the riverbank. It seems that it is indeed a very serious beach, as it‘s also home to the Mildura Lifesaving Club. Id only ever associated lifesaving clubs with pounding coastal surf, so to know that our brave lifesavers are also keeping a watchful eye on inland bathers. Now that I think of it, its not at all unusual to hear news reports of swimmers drowning in our lakes and rivers.
Theres also a caravan park here, with cabins for rent. We see a sign warning visitors to be aware that large limbs of gum trees can crashing down on them, even on windless days. Ive never known quite what to make of warnings like these. The trees are everywhere so you cant really avoid them. Youll never know if half
of one of thems going to fall on you until it already has, by which time it‘s presumably too late. The only obvious option available to deal with this risk would then seem to me to be not here in the first place. I hope Im not missing something here.
We head across the river again to the New South Wales town of Wentworth, which sits at the confluence of the Murray and Darling Rivers. I leave Issy snoozing while I take a quick tour of the towns heritage listed jail and its museum. The jail was built between 1879 and 1881 and operated until it was formally in 1928. I suspect that not a lot of good things happened here. I dont think too vivid an imagination is required to work out what the museums flogging stool would have been used for. The cells are all tiny and were told that prisoners baked in summer and froze in winter. The mens block is an order of magnitude bigger than the womens, but it seems that the architect may have underestimated the criminal tendencies of the local female population. The two tiny female cells apparently sometimes
had to hold up to fourteen prisoners at a time, and it seems that the good ladies of the Salvation Army were frequent inmates. The locals apparently considered their singing in the street an affront to traditional religious practices, the penalty for which was a few days in the lockup. The museum also tells us that the jails haunted, and that this has been proven by scientific experiments. Of course it has.
We head back across the river into Victoria, and are again disappointed that there are no border guards in place demanding to see our COVID permits. Its very windy, which is whipping up the dust and making visibility a bit limited. We narrowly avoid missing a turn and ploughing headlong into a row of grapevines. Its also turned very icy. We came north partly to get at least slightly warmer.
