Trip #3 and #4

MY third and fourth trips of 2011 are now complete but, as I didn’t do any flying and didn’t need to show my passport, the statistics are limited to hotel stays.

Trip #3 – Victoria’s King Valley

Hotels – Lindenwarrah (Milawa), Casa Luna Gourmet Accommodation (Myarrhee).

Total number of hotels in 2011 – 10

Trip #4 – Victorian Goldfields

Hotels – Craig’s Royal Hotel (Ballarat), Fountain View Suites (Bendigo)

Total number of hotels in 2011 – 12

While I didn’t get any new stamps in the passport, or add any destinations to my country list, I did collect a whole lot of photographs which I have arranged into a couple of galleries...here are the links.

King Valley...

https://picasaweb.google.com/wordsillustrated/GoldfieldsLoResImages?feat=directlink

Goldfields...

https://picasaweb.google.com/wordsillustrated/KingValley?authkey=Gv1sRgCIO7r4G42O-SxAE&feat=directlink

My next trip will be another domestic one, to Outback South Australia on an APT tour, and I am off at the start of the new month.

Exploring the back road

I MUST have been to Bendigo and Ballarat a couple of dozen times in my life.

When I was playing netball and basketball for my town we dashed up to those rural cities a few times each year to take on the local teams, and I lived in Bendigo back in 1992 while completing my first year of university.

But every time I made the journey into central Victoria I travelled along the Calder or Western highways, and never made the journey between the two settlements through villages like Maldon, Castlemaine or Maryborough.

Until today, that is.

Today we drove from Ballarat to Bendigo, stopping for lunch in Castlemaine, enjoying an afternoon shopping stroll in Maldon, and breaking for morning tea in the hamlet of Newstead which turned out to be a real gem.

Newstead is just 15 minutes from Castlemaine, on the banks of the Loddon River, and there are two establishments that deserve a mention.

Dig @ Newstead is a cafe on one corner of the main drag which seems to be open from early in the morning and until late at night serving breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between.

The eatery is set inside an old building that was moved from nearby Hepburn Springs a few years back – it served as everything from a dance hall to gym during the years it was in Spa Country – and now it’s the place to get a great cup of coffee, a homemade cake or a yummy pizza.

Just across the road is The Red Store which is a classic 19^th century building full of the most delightful old treasures.

The emporium is set in the town’s original general store, which still has the original Baltic pine shelves and long counters, and today owner Elizabeth Bell attends auctions and visits old farms to collect the unique antique trinkets.

You will find stacks of old leather suitcases, lace tea tray clothes in antique shoe boxes, children’s toys, knives with bone handles, and heavy steel watering cans.

It’s not like me to linger in an antique store – I have my own old junk, I don’t need to add to that collection – but The Red Store is a charming spot and more like a chic home-wares store that just happens to sell things that are far from new.

Imagine this

I HAVE a vivid imagination, especially when I’m visiting places of historical significance.

When I was exploring Schonbrunn Palace in Vienna I pictured Maria Theresa’s brood playing in the palace’s long hallways, when I was standing on the patch of Vietnamese land that once accommodated the Khe Sanh camp I could see swarms of helicopters filling the sky, and when I was in Buenos Aires I imagined Eva Peron gliding along the Recoleta footpaths.

My imagination doesn’t just work in far-away lands, and it’s been known to kick into high gear even when I’m a stone’s throw from home.

I’m in Ballarat today, taking a trip through Victoria’s historic Goldfields, and when I was walking the rural city’s streets looking for shops and galleries to write about I could easily picture the characters of the gold rush.

So you can imagine my excitement when I discovered I would be staying at the very historic Craig’s Royal Hotel, and the thrill of actually checking in and opening the door to my grand suite on the top floor.

Craig’s Royal Hotel was built in 1853, just two years after the first nuggets were found in nearby Clunes and one year after prospectors starting arriving in Ballarat, and in 1855 the Eureka Stockade Royal Commission sat in one of the posh pub’s rooms.

The hotel has retained many of its bygone features, including a lazy lift that only works once those inside have closed two heavy doors, and the rooms are decorated with the same style of furniture that would have greeted 19^th-century guests.

And there have been some famous guests over the years.

Mark Twain stayed at the hotel in 1895 when he was in town to speak at the Mechanics’ Institute, Dame Nellie Melba sang from the Reading Room balcony in 1908, and Horatio Kitchener crashed there when in Australia establishing our military.

More recently Donald Bradman and Robert Menzies were guests, as were King George V and Queen Mary when they were simply the Duke and Duchess of York.

So, as I drifted off to sleep in my canopy bed, I pictured elegant ladies and handsome gentlemen gliding around the dance floor in the ballroom, scruffy miners checking in after striking it rich in the nearby diggings, and the notables who may have occupied that very same room in years gone by.

This valley is king

VICTORIA’S King Valley is a favourite with the tourists.

Melbourne holiday makers dash up the Hume Highway to Milawa and Oxley when they can string a couple of vacation days together to eat, drink and be merry in the land of wine and cheese.

But I have discovered there’s another King Valley hamlet that deserves a moment of consideration when planning a King Valley escape.

Whitfield, which is a 30-minute drive from the start of the Snow Road at Oxley, is a village with just a couple of hundred residents but a handful of vineyards and a lot of good wine.

Back in the old days the settlement was known as White Fields, with inspiration for the name coming from the tiny flowers that grew in the farmer’s paddocks, but somewhere in history a lazy bugger dropped a letter and merged the two words to come up with the modern title.

Tobacco was traditionally the money-making crop in this picturesque part of Victoria but, when the government started reducing quotas, the Italian migrants that settled in this region in the 20^th century had to find another way to make a buck.

The first and second-generation Australians looked to their Italian heritage and started growing grapes in the region that boasts a swag of favourable micro-climates in this one long valley.

First they planted chardonnay, riesling, cabernet and merlot but, as they became more established and their vinos attracted attention from wine lovers around Australia, they began nurturing the Italian varieties their parents and grandparents grew in the Old Country.

While sangiovese, barbera and pinot grigio are doing well, the King Valley is now considered to be prosecco country.

This white variety, which makes a delicious sparkling that’s fermented in tanks rather than the bottle like the more traditional champagne, is grown in the elevated vineyards that are surrounded by the eucalypts that have sprouted since the last bushfire blazed through in 2007.

Prosecco originally hails from a small region in northern Italy, in the foothills of the Dolomites not far from the island city of Venice, and the locals say it’s the sparking for everyday drinking while champagne is only for special occasions.

One of the reasons Whitfield is a nice place to visit is because everyone knows everyone – or should I say, everyone is related to everyone – and the locals are so friendly that visitors are made to feel very welcome.

During our visit we had lunch with several members of the Dal Zotto family and, for just a few hours, I felt like I was a member of a huge Italian family doing lots of eating, drinking, talking and laughing.

And, if you want to sample a drop of prosecco, this is the place to do it.

Dal Zotto was the first winery in Australia to plant the prosecco grapes, and make a sparkling wine from the sweet juice that comes with a good season, with the family’s patriarch drawing on his childhood experiences to make two delightful varieties.

Otto Dal Zotto was born and raised in the Italian village of Valdobbiadene, the ancestral home of prosecco, where his relatives made enough of the “fun sparkling” every season to fill their own cellars from the grapes that grew on the steep hills outside town.

``There was no flat land in Valdobbiadene, all the grapes were up in the hills and it was very hard to get tractors up there so everything was done by hand,’’ Otto explains.

``Prosecco dates back to the Roman Empire, the Italians have been perfecting it over the years, and we put our first vines in the ground in 1999.

``I came to Australia in 1968 and growing prosecco was a way for me to connect with the old world while in my new world.’’

Today Otto looks after the vines and his son Michael is carrying on the family tradition of making Dal Zotto wine.