Castlemaine

On Wednesday we decided to explore Castlemaine more thoroughly. We went up Lyttelton Street to the Burke and Wills Memorial, known by several other names like Burke and Hare (me) and Birkenstock (Jason). Burke and Wills were two explorers who went from Melbourne in the South to the Gulf of Carpenteria in the North of Australia, and were the first white people to do so. How they managed is a mystery as they are generally acknowledged to be amongst the most bungling and incompetent of explorers and it’s a wonder they didn’t end up dead on the way, a fate which met many of their fellow expeditioners. Both died on the return journey, and only one of the original party made it back alive.

There’s a memorial in Castlemaine because John O’Hara Burke had been Police Commissioner of the town for the preceding two years.

Afterwards we made our way back down, passing Castlemaine’s most famous geographical feature, the anticlinal fold:

Those of you knowledgeable about geography will be able to explain this to the rest of us. Or just follow the link.

We then headed up to the Castlemaine art gallery, which has works by Australian artists as well as a museum of Castlemaine in days of yore.

We went to lunch at the Public Inn, where we had a very reasonable two-course set lunch with wine, consisting of tuna carpaccio and pork belly (me) and shoulder of lamb croquette and salmon pasta (Nicola).

After lunch we walked up to the Botanical Gardens, and explored the Significant Trees of Victoria, of which there are two examples in the gardens.

A Stone Pine (Pinus pinea) - a significant tree of Victoria

  

We’d pretty well worn ourselves out with all that walking around, so we then went back to the house for a cup of tea and a rest.