2013 Travels: Saturday, April 20th ~ Port Fairy, Vic

Before we left Maryborough, we visited Paddy Ranges National Park and the Sewing Machine Museum.

In Paddy Ranges NP, it was hard to pick an area of 'untouched' ground, ie where the prospectors haven't been. Prospectors with Gold Fever have dug out many divets (thereby creating mounds) everywhere you look, every inch of ground turned over. We kicked around a few rocks and stones, well you never know do you? I've heard of a few random kicks that have yielded a sparkler. Our gold was in the form of a Yellow-tufted Honeyeater and Golden Whistler ~ pure gold for us.

Quite the contrast then, to head to the Sewing Machine Museum. But how could a 'craftee' miss the opportunity? The museum is housed in the old Maryborough Flour Mill building, in itself, a nice piece of history. I don't know how many sewing machines and associated stuff we looked at, but I loved it.

I'd almost forgotten about my ol' Singer treadle machine. (Yeah, Mum & Dad, what happened to my first?)

And I'd quite forgotton about the coloured cams. (The round piece of plastic with bumps around the circumference. When the cam is inserted in the sewing machine, the "bumps" make the needle move left or right to form decorative stitches. Each different cam makes the sewing machine form one specific decorative stitch.)

But then the wind came up, blowing quite strongly and we raced back to the van to ensure Mary Poppins didn't have her eye on our place. Thankfully, all was in place, so we hunkered down for the afternoon, and played our first game of Travel Scrabble and studied the map to see where this wind would take us next.

Thankfully, the wind eased for our trip out of Maryborough, heading towards (maybe) Port Fairy. The plan was to stop at Lake Goldsmith and Slater Lakes for a spot of birdwatching and stop for the night somewhere (not necessarily Port Fairy, but that general direction). But, Mother Nature had other plans. I was driving and my navigator was madly switching map to map, because according to his maps, we should be seeing the lake off to the right. Instead, we could see a large, flat, bare space of ground, not a skerick of water. ummmm, how bad is that? While we were experiencing rain, you think rain is falling mostly everywhere, but not so. Here before us was this dry, very dry, area. It was quite deflating for us. What can you do? We drove on, to the next lake. But it was the same story .. duh. So (sadly) we drove on. And before we knew it, we were in Port Fairy. Nice to see the ocean again.

The wind was still blowing, but we put the awning out a little way anyway and sat down to lunch (yes, even after our seemingly slow day, we were in Port Fairy by lunch). After lunch, we took in the awning, it was just too windy.

After a rest, we headed out to the information centre and a bit of sightseeing (including birdwatching of course). Surprise, surprise, it was a bit windy for the birds. But we rugged up and ventured out around Griffiths Island to see the Shearwater Colony.

The adults have recently left the colony now, leaving their young to fend for themselves (or die). We saw so many carcasses and one poor thing 'surfing' in the ocean, trying to fly, but not quite sure what he was doing. The walk around the island takes about an hour - some path to the beach, then some beach walking ~ great exercise.

And saw the lighthouse (built in 1859)

While we were wandering around the streets of Port Fairy, we noticed in the shop windows, buckets of yo-yos (you know the biscuits), all sizes, mini yo-yos, normal sized yo-yos. Seems to be the trend here, not cup cakes like everywhere else. We saw them again today at the Farmers Market (Saturday). YUMMY !!