8 October, 2017 - Bendigo and Maldon

Woke a couple of times during the night to the sound of pouring rain. It was nice to finally wake up and find that the skies were mainly blue and the temperature was mild. Yesterday we discovered a German Kaffee House in a converted factory and were keen to try it for breakfast this morning. A short walk later we were sitting in a fantastic venue featuring the most mouth watering German and Austrian delicacies and the smell of fantastic coffee. What a find!
After breakfast we decided to make the short drive to Bendigo only 30 minutes away.
As we usually do we visited the Visitor Information Centre first and bought tickets for the Bendigo "Talking Tram" which runs the length of Bendigo every half hour. Our first stop was the interesting tram depot and workshop.

This workshop is a collection of old trams undergoing various renovations, mostly by volunteers.

Pretty soon it was time to go on and take the rest of the ride which was fascinating. After a couple of hours in Bendigo we moved on to Maldon. This is one of the best preserved historic town we have ever visited. It's almost like being on a movie set. On the way there we passed a historic dragline which was used in the 70's to process the old gold tailings which were found to still contain significant amounts of gold.

Did a bit of research on this machine and found that it originally came from the Yallourn mine. After a couple of hours walk around Maldon and a beautiful iced coffee it was time to return to Castlemaine. This is a very historic area with old buildings and heritage sites everywhere. On the way back we passed a beautiful little dilapidated stone cottage.

So now we're back in the van and after a very pleasant day we are experiencing a noisy thunderstorm. Hopefully it will be fine again tomorrow.