Wednesday 7 November 2012 Daylesford

We had a sleep in this morning, woke up after 8am and took our time easing into the day. We both immediately got on our phones to see how the USA election was going. I guess you could call us both “Electionphiles”, we love following election result nights, and with a few friends over in the US it makes it all the more interesting.

Consequently we didn’t get out of the van and into tourist mode until about 11:45am! We headed up to Wombat Hill Botanical Gardens and Lookout Tower. The standout features of the gardens were the huge Redwood and Oak trees, as well as the magnificently flowering rhododendrons. As an aside, at the caravan park we are in there are numerous HUGE Giant American Redwoods, 1 just on the outskirts of the park is on the National Trust Register of Significant trees. The other main feature of the botanic gardens is the Lookout Tower, located at the peak of the hill that the gardens sit on. After climbing all 78 steps to the top of the tower, I was a bit disappointed by the view, it was blocked out by “bloody” big trees, go figure huh!!  From the top you also got a very good view over the very large covered water storage reservoir adjacent to the tower.

From there we drove around to The Convent Gallery.  As you might guess, it is an Art gallery in an old Catholic Convent. It is a very impressive old world type building surrounded by well kept gardens. The Gallery was OK, the displays were about 60 / 40 art to religious items. We started exploring in the basement, where there was a single room museum devoted to the buildings Convent days. The art gallery took in the upper 3 floors, which we accessed via more stairs!!! The old Convent is a rabbit warren of rooms, and interesting to move around it, they also connect to a conference/reception centre. We took time to walk around the gardens soaking up the peace and beauty before we left.

We lunch at The Larder again! The menu was a bit decimated by the public holiday trade yesterday, we both had “sandwiches”, which were very tasty.

After lunch we had a bit of a drive around to look at a few of the local sights. We checked out Wombat Flat, historically significant to the areas gold mining past, and also took in Jubilee Lake, and the attached caravan park. (That might be a very pleasant place to stay next time we bring the van over here(which we will), if we can get a site down near the lake.

We spent the rest of the afternoon tidying up the van and getting it all ready for the 650km trip home tomorrow. It’s hard to believe that this trip is all but done. It has been a fantastic road trip and we have found so many places we would love to spend more time in.