I have had a few requests for photos of my recent work trip to Camperdown and the Western District of Victoria, so I am very happy to oblige...
Now, first of all I have a bit of a funny story to tell you - somehow, despite having GPS in my car and Google Maps on my phone I managed to get a bit lost on my way to Camperdown! I am really not sure how but I found myself on the back roads rather than the more major roads. Now, this was a good and a bad thing.
The good thing was that I found this gorgeous bake house in the town of Inverleigh to stop at for afternoon tea.
Next door was this quaint pub.
However, after my stop at Inverleigh, I found myself driving through this sort of rather bleak scenery with my petrol gauge showing empty!!!!!!
As I was on the back roads, I kept driving through these tiny, tiny towns - comprising only one or two houses and maybe a small church or Memorial Hall but NO petrol stations. So, I kept going, always hoping that the next town would be be big enough to have a petrol station but no such luck!
I ended up sort of coasting the last 50 kilometres, hoping against hope that my luck would hold and it did! I made it to Camperdown and into a petrol station.
Now, I will tell you how close I was to disaster - my petrol tank holds 60 litres, I pumped 59.6 litres of petrol into it once I got to the petrol station - yikes!!!!!
.... and yes, Camperdown does have a racetrack (see my last post to understand this reference).
I am not sure if I have told you before, but the reason that Lambis and I visit schools is to engage with students to take part in the Spirit of Anzac Prize competition (students write an essay, etc, about a topic to do with Australians at war and the best 22 students are then sent on an overseas trip to battlefields where Australians have fought - an amazing experience for them). Whilst Lambis enthralls them with his true story of finding The Lost Men of Fromelles.
So, as we are both so fascinated by war history, every time we go somewhere, we always check out the local War Memorial.
Camperdown is such a pretty town, full of historic buildings.
Our first school was Mercy College, Camperdown.
Then it was onto Mortlake to visit another War Memorial, a delicious lunch at a local cafe and then onto the local high school.
Mortlake was also a pretty little town.
After two successful school visits, the next day we went to the tiny town of Timboon for two sessions at the local high school.
We had a lovely visit at Timboon P - 12 and I especially enjoyed chatting to the lovely librarian, Jenny (who it turns out is the cousin of a friend of mine although I didn't find out until a couple of days later) who proudly showed me all around her School/Community library. Now, I actually completed a double degree (all of those many years ago) in teaching and librarianship and the first few years of my teaching career were spent as a teacher-librarian, so I really enjoyed exploring this library.
In between sessions, Lambis, his wife, Suzanne and I had lunch at the locally recommended The Fat Cow cafe.
On one of the shelves I spied this gorgeous teacup but alas, it was a family heirloom and not for sale or I am pretty sure that it would have come home with me - lol!
My last stop in Timboon (Lambis and Suzanne had set off separately), was at the local whiskey distillery.
Where I did do a small tasting and bought some delicious local cheese, jams and olive oil, as well as a small bottle of whiskey, of course!
Well, that is all for me for now, I hope that you enjoyed this trip to the Western District of Victoria with me - I promise that there will be a stitchy post coming up very soon - I have been doing lots and lots of stitching (just not much blogging - lol!)
hugs,
