Cavendish

From Naracoorte we headed into Victoria, heading for a small town called Cavendish, where Liz had found a small camping ground that covered all our needs in what appeared to be a quiet, picturesque environment. Cavendish is approximately 25km from Hamilton, where it had been organised for Max to do his NAPLAN testing.

On the way we went through Edenhope and discovered a monument celebrating Australia’s first cricket team to tour England, an Aboriginal team drawn from the people of that area. This was a great lead in to our next stop – Harrow. It had been suggested to us that it was well worth the deviation in to Harrow by Mark Hogan and he was well and truly right. First stop was a small park on the entry to town for lunch.

Within the park was the original log gaol (used in the mid 1880’s) which was still in very solid condition (as Liz can attest to after misjudging the doorway and smacking into it with her head!). There was also an original settler’s cottage that had been relocated to the park with  furnishings intact and  overview of its history included.

In the middle of town is the Johnny Mullagh museum. Johnny Mullagh was considered the best of the touring Aboriginal cricket team and the museum is a fantastic celebration of his achievements, the touring teams story as a whole and the early days of Harrow itself. The man on duty at the museum that day explained that it had originally been set up as a joint venture between the town and the local shire, however recently the shire had wanted to shut it down so the townspeople had been running it for the past year on a wholly voluntary basis and were hoping to be able to continue to do so into the future. I just hope that enough people continue to detour in to make it viable for it to be continued as the display itself is brilliantly put together and the story is one people should be more aware of.

From Harrow we headed into Cavendish itself. The campsite is (was) administered by the local general store. Cavendish was large enough to house a local police station, footy/netball club and primary school, but when talking tot he shopkeeper she told us that they were closing down within a week as they had been unable to sell. The local pub was already community owned as the previous owners were unable to sell that and it was going to close until the community stepped in. It appears to me that there is an opportunity for the community to also take over the general store, combine it with the pub and maintain what I would think are essential services within the town. The fact that towns of this size are in this situation is probably indicative of the smaller distances between major centres in Victoria than we are used to in WA.

The camping grounds turned to be almost better than we were expecting, co-located at the local recreation ground there was 8 powered sites surrounding a well appointed camp kitchen, with almost unlimited unpowered sites available along the river. At $6 per person for the powered sites – with children under 12 free – this was possibly the best value we had found on the trip yet. For a small town the grounds were also well used with there rarely being a night without a couple of other sites being occupied, even though it was starting to get fairly cold and the numbers of travellers was reducing.

Our activities while in Cavendish were reasonably limited with Max having to spend three mornings in Hamilton at school, but we did manage to venture up to Dunkeld and through the Southern Grampions – which were magnificent - one afternoon and also wander around the Wannon Falls for another afternoon. The falls were created through volcanic activity and just beautiful, even on an overcast and drizzly day.

Hamilton itself appeared a very pleasant town.although it was hard to get a handle on its socio-economics. While appearing reasonably affluent in places there was also a feeling of socio-economic pressure when driving and walking around.

While at Cavendish the Auskickers all turned out one evening, which was the first time the kids had a visual reminder that they were missing out on footy this season. I don’t think it worried them however as it was raining and about 6 degrees, so we watched from the sidelines for a while, rugged up in coats and beanies while I also had my hands wrapped around a mug of coffee. It seemed a far better option than being out on the field!

Finally, after ending up staying an extra night on top of our original plans we headed out for Warrnambool.