Wednesday 5 July 2017

Camperdown Does have a Racecourse!

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,
 






10 comments:

AnaCristina said...

Thank you for sharing Kaye!!!

marly said...

So I'm not the only one that gets lost with a map and a GPS! But you arrived and just in the nick of time. Interesting post Kaye.

Linda said...

What a fun post Kaye. Looks like you had a great work trip.

Linda

Mary said...

HOw stressful to be driving around tiny towns on fumes!! So glad you didn't run out! The Bake shop and The Fat Cow are charming, great signage for the Fat Cow. What a great trip, combining work and pleasure! Looking forward to seeing your stitching projects, Mary and RJ@stitchingfriendsforever

Ariadne said...

Great blog post! Thank you for the link I loved reading about Lambis and how much he assisted in finding out all those soldiers!AriadnefromGreece!

Jo who can't think of a clever nickname said...

You really are having a wonderful time in this job! So many places to visit, people to meet and delicious food to sample.
I am glad that you made it to the petrol station and didn't need to be rescued!

Daniela Bencúrová said...

Thank you for walking in the beautiful city! Play whiskey :-)))
Hugs!

Barb said...

I loved this post Kaye. Your job sounds so interesting. It combines two things I love, history and teaching. It was so interesting learning about the towns you visited. Also, thanks for the 4th of July post. We had a quiet but noisy one-now does that make any sense to you??

The Knitting Cross Stitcher said...

Lovely photos Kaye,I really enjoyed this post.My sons would love to do a tasting of that whiskey :)they are both partial to single malt superior labels:)
Boy,did you cut the petrol situation fine!! so glad you made it to a filling station.I almost found myself in a similar situation on my first long solo journey after passing my driving test in 1980,I was running on fumes in roadworks on a motorway..I just about made it to a service station.There was nowhere to pull over on the motorway,I would have caused a massive traffic jam!!

Brigitte said...

I definitely enjoyed taking this road trip with you. I love driving on the backroads myself when I am underway. There is always so much to discover like all these tiny towns and villages you would never see when only taking the main roads. I even like doing this here where I live.

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