Victoria - Outback To Ocean, Goldfields To Golden Beaches

I'd just crossed the bridge spanning the Murray River and left New South Wales behind, and entered Victoria and motored into the cute little town of Echuca. It had a resemblance to a wild west town. I'd lost track of the time and the days, but I didn't care. I was the consummate traveler once again. Echuca derives its name from a convergence of three rivers. It's the Yorta Yorta word for meeting of the waters. Founded in 1853 by ex-convict and entrepreneur Henry Hopwood, the town rapidly flourished into Australia's largest inland port during the 1870s riverboat boom. The town appeared to have cute shops like the Chocolate Company, but it was hot and I wanted to get to the coast, so didn't linger long and drove around admiring the cool buildings. As the closest point on the Murray River to Melbourne, Echuca became an economic powerhouse. The town grew from 26 people in 1854 to nearly 4,800 by 1871. Echuca became the paddle steamer capital, the second largest port in Victoria and the largest inland port in Australia. Coming into Rochester, but no, this is not New York. No, this was something entirely different. Originally home to the Pinpandur Aboriginal people, the region was settled by European sheep grazers. Founded in the 1840s as Rose Camp for drovers, it was renamed Rochester in 1855. The gold rush brought increased traffic and the town became an important stage stop. When the railroad arrived, the town transitioned from sheep farming to flower milling. These days people come to see the Victorian-era buildings and have a drink in a local pub. Here in Victoria, outside of Bendigo, there is free camping up this road. It's a flat area. It does have tables, a shelter and outhouses. No running water, however, and no showers. But it is a place to park for the night if you want. Head down Notley Road to the campground and you'll find it in the Gumtree Forest. Bendigo is the biggest city I've seen in quite some time. I've been in the outback for a while and now into the city, tram lines and everything here. Bendigo is a gold rush boom town. When gold was discovered in 1851, the wealth from it transformed the town, funding elaborate public buildings, ornate banks and sprawling heritage gardens that still define the city. Today, it's celebrated for its stunning Victorian architecture, a thriving arts and cultural scene and a renowned food and wine culture. Well, we got out of Bendigo. It's kind of a big city. And we're going down toward Castle Mane. And this area has kind of a look of California, actually. And it's even got wineries, just like California. There's some vineyards now, back behind those gum trees. We're going off the main highway for a bit to a place called Malden, which apparently has some gold rush history in it. I saw a sign for the historic town of Malden, so I thought I'd just go off the main highway and check it out for just a little bit. So let's have a quick look around. This is an old gold rush town. It's fairly well preserved, and it's turned into a tourist town now. And there have been many movies filmed here. Maybe you'd like to stay in a B&B here in town. Or maybe you'd like to buy it. Cheers. Cheers, mate. This is Frankie, the friendly cockatoo. Hey, bud. How are you? Hey, smile. About 15 k's down the road is the town of Castle, Maine, which also has a lot of artists. Going into the middle of a heat wave. Yeah, it's supposed to hit like 40, 45. In some places in Australia, it's going to hit 50 degrees, which is like 120 degrees Fahrenheit. So yeah, it's kind of dangerous heat out here. It can be pretty brutal at times. Something you might notice is that even in the small towns in Australia and New Zealand, they have wonderfully beautiful parks. I was having a look around the park before going to the festivities on Australia Day. This day commemorates the 1788 landing of the first fleet and the raising of the British flag by Governor Arthur Phillip in Port Jackson at what is now Sydney. It's now a national holiday, and I wanted to see what it had in store. Not only did they honor their history of colonization, but they also honored the traditional inhabitants of the land, the aboriginal people. That day in Castle, Maine, 24 people were officially welcomed as new Australian citizens of the country. Ice cream and sausages. Happy Australia Day, everyone. And this, it's got pumpkin in there. It does look a lot like California here, doesn't it? I left Castle, Maine behind and hit the road, looking for cooler pastures beside the sea. The region certainly had a similar look and almost uncanny resemblance to the California of years ago. The dry brown grass, the rolling hills, the eucalyptus trees, and even Monterey cypress trees too. Areas of agriculture and the signs pointing where to find wineries. The roads were less crowded. The land wasn't full of sprawling subdivisions. And not too far away was the sea, where undoubtedly there were beach bunnies and surfers. It felt like an easygoing vibe. The more I drove, the more it felt like I was seeing a California that once was. A less peopled, less populated state, like taking a cruise through the Golden State in the 1970s. Dalesford. Looks like everybody's out today. It's Australia Day. People are out rubbing around. Dalesford was best known for its mineral springs and wellness retreats. There were throngs of people wandering about. I stopped in an art gallery for a bit and chatted with some local artists. I wanted to find a spring that had healthy and refreshing water and fill up my jug to take along. Just outside of town, you can fill up with the Wombat Flat Mineral Spring. It's like soda water. This one's apparently the best one all around. There are several of these springs here in the area. It does look a lot like California here. You've got ag fields beneath brown grassy hills, and I think even those trees might be Monterey Cypress. I'm not sure. Which would only add to the California vibe. I'm not sure what that's in regard to, but the guy sure went to a lot of effort to write that into the hillside. I'm entering the big town of Ballarat. I've been to Ballarat, California, outside of Death Valley, and it's actually named after this town, which was formerly a gold mining hub back in the day. Ballarat had a population of about 112,000, making it the third largest urban inland city in Australia and the third largest city in Victoria. In 1851, gold was discovered near the present-day town, sparking the Victorian gold rush. Ballarat subsequently became a thriving boom town that for a time rivaled Melbourne, capital of Victoria, in terms of wealth and cultural influence. Ballarat gained recognition as a particularly rich gold field. A flood of immigrants began, many from Ireland and China. They set up tent cities and shanty town shacks. The population soon swelled to over 1,000 people. I was enamored with the historic buildings, many of them quite ornate, capturing a vignette of a different era and earlier time in history. I drove around the town admiring the buildings, thinking this would be a great backdrop for a movie depicting the wild activity of a mostly lawless mining boom town. Crime, drugs, homelessness, graffiti. It's all here too, and it's just getting worse. We're leaving Ballarat, and we're heading toward Geelong. It's been such Geelong time since I've been to the beach, so let's go. Even in Australia, these wind turbines are popping up like weeds sometimes. Another free camp spot is in Meredith, in Victoria, between Ballarat and Geelong. And it doesn't have any showers, but it does have toilets just down that-a-way. It's sunset here, and I'll show you some of the rest of the camping area here. You can just pretty much park wherever you like, and it's not bad. It's pretty peaceful. The highway's far enough away. It's not too bad, and there's just a little street over here for the town, but there's hardly any traffic on that. Well, it's not as quiet here as I thought it would be. The highway was quite noisy this morning, and there were barking dogs. Also, there's a railroad just right over there, and a train went by in the night, so that was pretty noisy. I don't like feeling confined, and that's what I'm sort of feeling like. Like I'm being herded into these little camping areas, which is right next to a residential area, and pretty close off the highway, and right next to the train tracks there. So it's, you know, I'm a guy who likes to explore and get out, and I would say in the past, maybe close to 700 miles that I've driven, I've only seen areas alongside the highway that weren't fenced for probably 55 of those miles. And most of those miles were national parks and state forests. So if you take that away, I'm going to say maybe only 8 or 10 miles of that 700 miles have been unfenced on each side of the road. So yeah, I'm herded with the other campers into this little space. There's just hundreds and hundreds of miles of fences all along the roadsides here, and there's rarely a break where you can kind of go off and explore down a road. And the national parks are quite small compared to the states and Canada, so you can't really, if there's even any roads there, you can't even go very far. I mean, you could probably drive across the whole park in less than a half hour on most of those parks. Even though there is open space, apparently it looks that way. You go on Google Maps, it looks like it's one big wide open country, but they don't show you the fences all over the place. So Australia is certainly losing points in my book because it's so restrictive. It's definitely gone down several notches because of the lack of freedom to explore the landscape. You can't even get to the landscape. You can't even get out into nature, into the wild in most cases outside of the national parks and the state forests, which are, like I say, relatively small. This is Little Leth Bridge. This is the second Leth Bridge I've been in. The first one was in Canada. So I figured, you might as well have a look here and check it out. Getting close to Geelong. This place does look a lot like California in the brineries. And the place gets bushfires and burns whole towns off the map, just like California does. It looks like that's Geelong up ahead. It's a bigger city than I might have thought. Glory be, I'd finally made it to the sea. I always loved the ocean and the beaches. I just don't like all the restrictions. I think that's the ferry to Tasmania there. Made it to the ocean and none too soon. It's supposed to be 107 degrees Fahrenheit today. There seems to be more of a sense of fun and artistic expression along the water and in the oceanside towns. I enjoy the laid-back beach vibe. The ocean speaks to me. The whisper of wind. The rush of waves. The laugh of seagulls. Being able to look across the water and see nothing impeding the view. The sense of visual freedom is glorious. It's a place to unleash one's imagination. Somehow this place reminds me somewhat of Newport Beach, California. It's got a big pier and everything. Not far beyond Torquay is where the Great Ocean Road starts. A little coastal town of Torquay. Surf culture runs deep in Torquay. It's where the companies Rip Curl and Quicksilver got their start. The place is renowned for its idyllic beaches popular with surfers. The ocean here offers some of the best swells on the surf coast and you'll likely spot surfies shredding the waves. So I hope you enjoyed the little trip going through Victoria and down to the ocean. And from here on we're going to take the Great Ocean Road and see, hey, is it really that great or not? We'll find out. Stick around. Keep checking back with Rock Hopper Adventures. Don't forget to give me a like on the video. Share and subscribe. Until next time, this is the Rock Hopper. I'll see ya.