No, Bendigo and Moomba is not the name of some In the Night Garden kids' show spin-off, but the two things I did over the weekend.
Bendigo is a lovely old gold mining town, two hours by train northwest of Melbourne. It was having a locust infestation when I was there (been going on for a few months now) but it was still fun strolling the streets, crunching locusts under my feet, admiring the buildings etc. I even went down an old gold mine (but didn't find any gold).
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| Beautiful Bendigo. Not the best shot (taken on my phone's rubbish camera) but you can see some of the lovely 19th-century buildings built on the back of gold money, and the leafy park in the centre of town. |
And Moomba is a festival in Melbourne for which we got Monday off (don't know what the name means but if we get a day off for it that's enough information for me). There was a massive funfair along the banks of the Yarra, plus water skiing competitions, live music and food stalls. Made me think of a TV show last week where a Sydney stand-up comedian was comparing Melbourne and Sydney. As she said, the two cities are like siblings. There's Sydney, the pretty but vacuous one, who doesn't have to do anything but sit back and say "Look how pretty I am". People fall for her instantly but get a bit bored after all. And then there's Melbourne, which might not have Sydney's looks but puts a lot of effort in being interesting, friendly and fun. She takes a while to get to know but it's worth the effort. Moomba was an example of why Melbourne's better than Sydney.
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| Very poor quality pic I know (blame the phone again) but this is the water skiing on the Yarra (woman just jumping over ramp on the right hand side there), with the city behind. |
G'bye.
Cliff
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