Mildura, Vic. May 19, 2018

An early start saw us heading out along the Sturt Highway, and have slowed only to navigate our way through the straying cattle eating their way along the long paddock, we finally stopped for a short break and refreshments. We decided a nice hot coffee might be a better choice than a sip of cold water from the street corner fountain, despite its ornate looks and the fact that it commemorated the service given to the town by a long serving Mayor in 1883. Maybe if the original pewter mugs had still been dangling from their tethering chains we may have been tempted. Or not. The coffee was good at the Haveachat cafe, and we soon found ourselves back out on the road, heading west over the Hay Plain. The main, perhaps only, point of interest is that they grow cotton out here on the vast fields that stretch to the horizon and we must have come along toward the end of harvest as there were fields that looked like it had been snowing, and others bare except for the giant-sized rolls of picked and packed raw cotton. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them, all neatly lined up awaiting transport to the world at large.

Wandering Cows, Sturt Highway, near Hay NSW

Drinking fountain 1883 model, Old Man, 1950s model. Hay NSW

The plains end for us at Balranald as the road turns southwest towards our destination for the day: Mildura in Victoria, where we planned a two-day break.

On our day-off, we visited the farmer's market and bought cakes instead of fruit and veg. and then followed the self-drive Chaffey History trail brochure. Not wanting to bore everyone to death, I'll make it brief: The Chaffey brothers, William and George, came to Australia at the behest of a Victorian State MP, Alfred Deakin, to introduce their irrigation system to a part of Victoria best described as Mallee Scrub, which is Victorian for desert.

In the beginning, 1887, William bought the defunct pastoral lease know as 'Mildura' and moved into the dilapidated homestead on the banks of the Murray River. The original homestead is lost in time, but the civic fathers had it recreated a hundred year later, and it is now set in a very pleasant park, not more than 100 metres from the original site. I'm not a huge fan of recreations, I'd rather see the fallen down ruins, and really this one is no exception. It's just a building, cold and empty and showing no signs of its historic connection.

Repro. Mildura Homestead. Mildura Vic

Murray River from Mildura Homestead, Mildura Vic

In keeping with the resurrection theme, the next stop is the cemetery, where they have seen fit to have removed the Chaffey women from the adjacent graveyard and given them a single obelisk and plot of there own. Again, it's disappointing: I'd rather see them in their original places complete with weather-beaten stone, faded inscriptions and rusty iron rails.

Just down the road, a bit closer to town is 'Rio Vista', the house that William had built for his family in 1889. His family and descendants occupied the house until 1950, when it was sold to the local council and converted into an Art Gallery. Thankfully, they have now restored some of the rooms from white-washed galleries back into the grandeur that was a late Victorian mansion in Australia.  One room in particular, the dining room, is set up beautifully and contains many original Chaffey pieces of furniture and bric-a-brac, donated by Chaffey's descendants.

Rio Vista. Home to WB Chaffey 1889. Mildura Vic

Fountain outside Rio Vista, Mildura Vic

William Chaffey's main claim to fame was that he designed a steam engine, based on maritime principles, and a radical new centrifugal pump, used to lift vast amounts of water up from the river and into a nearby billabong, where the water was pooled awaiting further pumping up to higher land for irrigation purposes.

The original pump house still stands, as does the second iteration of the second engine house. One of the two Chaffey pumps may be inside the locked and barred pump house, another may be somewhere undergoing 'restoration', or so I was told. An original postcard from 1960 shows one of the pumps outside the Art Gallery, the same pump that Pamela and I climbed all over in 1961.

Brian and Pamela on the Chaffey pump, 1961, Mildura Vic 

Pump House. Mildura Vic

Further out of Mildura is the town of Red Cliff, also part of the irrigation scheme, which has a most unique vehicle on display: 'Big Lizzie'. Big Lizzie is a hand made tractor, of sorts. It's purpose was to carry heavy loads and pull trailers with even heavier loads. Frank Botrill, the designer, builder and operator of 'Big Lizzie', designed special Dreadnaught wheels which look like they have giant sized flat feet mounted around them, that it lays down on the ground, one after the other as the wheel turns, and which the wheel proper runs on. The wheel was designed by Botrill to work in sandy soils. The design was effective but was later outdated by the caterpillar track. When it was built "Big Lizzie" was the biggest tractor in Australia and thought to be the biggest in the world, at 34 feet high by 18 feet wide, and weighing 45 tons. It had two trailers also fitted with Bottrill wheels, giving a combined carrying capacity of 80 tons. Mind you, it only travelled at 2 mph, so you need most of the supplies before you got to your destination!

Big Lizzie. Red Cliffs Vic.

Big Lizzie. Red Cliffs Vic.

Oh, and after Harry met Megan they got married and lived happily ever after. Good on them, now the world can start rotating again!