Australia
November & December, 1989

The only things that I have to reconstruct a journal for this trip are pictures, with no captions, and my faulty memory. I do remember that I went back to Australia, particularly Victoria, because I liked to country so well in 1988 when I did a bike tour (you can read about this in Bike Tours on this site). I was also very unhappy with my job and wanted to see if there was any possibility of moving to Australia; I soon found out that at 45 years of age I was too old for this to happen. I might note that was also true in finding a new job here in the USA after quiting my bank job. I have shown the time that I was there as being in November & December but that might not be correct, it is possible that it was only December. I know that I visited Melbourne and its suburbs for about a week and then went to Adelaide, Mildura & Paynsville for about ten days and then back to Melbourne for a total of three weeks. The exact number of days in each place is only a guess. I have combined all of the pictures of Melbourne and suburbs together from the beginning and end of my trip and have tried to group them in some reasonable way rather than when I took them. With all that said, here are those pictures with memory captions added.

Melbourne Area

Melbourne 1

Melbourne 2

Port Phillip Bay

Port Phillip Bay Beach

Beach Path

Royal Botanic Garden 1

Royal Botanic Garden 2

Zoo 1

Zoo 2

I remember that I caught a bus from Melbourne, Victoria to Adelaide, South Australia and went through Ballarat, Victoria so the route was probably on Highway 8 also known as Dukes Highway Western. The travel time was about 9 hours and I remember that most of it was during daylight but we arrived in the early evening. I had a hotel reservation that was an easy walk from downtown but I don't recall anything about what I did that evening nor anything while I was there for two and one half days except what the pictures bring back to mind. So be it, here are those pictures.

Adelaide

Downtown 1

Downtown 2

Montefiore Park

Downtown & Park

Torrens River

When I was planning this trip I had decided that I would visit Mildura, Victoria on my return from Adelaide, South Australia. I was living in Upland and working for a bank headquartered in Ontario, CA; I had also attended Chaffey Junior College for two years so it seemed the thing to do. In 1881, the Chaffey brothers, George and William, purchased land (which at that time also included the present-day city of Upland) and the water rights to it. They engineered a drainage system channeling water from the foothills of Mount Baldy down to the flatter lands below that performed the dual functions of allowing farmers to water their crops and preventing the floods that periodically afflict them. They also created the City of Ontario and platted the streets, that included the main thoroughfare of Euclid Avenue, with its distinctive wide lanes and grassy median. Then in 1886 the Chaffeys went to Australia and selected a derelict sheep station at Mildura as the site for his first irrigation settlement; signing an agreement with the Victorian government to spend at least £300,000 on permanent improvements at Mildura in the next twenty years. They again platted the Mildura City streets, exactly the same as for Ontario, CA but now Euclid Avenue became Langtree Avenue. I made reservations for a hotel while in Adelaide because I knew that I would be arriving late in the evening. The bus that I caught was an express from Adelaide, South Australia to Sydney, New South Wales that stopped in Mildura. It was a 19+ hour trip to Sydney and the bus had two drivers with a place at the rear of the bus for one of them to sleep. Mildura was about 1/3 of the way to Sydney, or 7-8 hours, and we left around 4:00 PM putting me into Mildura near midnight. With all of that as background, here are the pictures that I took.

Mildura

Chaffey

Murry River

Working Man's Club

I left Mildura by train on the third day and arrived back in Melbourne where I stayed overnight at the Magnolia Court B-n-B. The following day after lunch I caught another train to Moe or Moewell where a friend worked and then she and I drove through Gippsland to Paynesville for a weekend at her parents home. The driving route was nearly the same as what I had bicycled in 1988 but everything always looks different from a car than a bicycle seat. I also saw a lot of the area around Paynesville that I had not see before which I was able to get pictures of and post them here now.

Paynesville

Gippsland Coal

Gippsland Dairy

Lakes Entrance

Victoria Lake

Lake Tyers

Epilogue: I enjoyed my three weeks vacation a lot, learned that moving to Australia was not realistic and became even more convinced that I had to quit my banking job. I did quit the following March 31, 1990 and didn't hold another “career job” until I retired in 1995.