Due to our 'spot of rain' the walking path was wonderful to walk upon today, we even extended our walk by a kilometer or more. The new walk section is a little more challenging but it adds a new dimension to the daily walk. It was good to catch up with a local and his dog 'Oscar' who particularly likes his walks along the path with all its new smells.
The Broken River is running reasonable fast, but dirty, at the moment and the ants, many types, are really active scouting around for food and building new homes.
'Our family' of kookaburras are also active, and noisy, greeting us with their laughter in the mornings. I must say I will be glad when the gum trees stop shedding their bark all over the path, but it is announcing a start of a new season so I guess I will have to put up with it.
There is always something to do on the path, clearing, widening, leveling, filling in holes created by wombats and spraying, all this is great therapy and it is a real pleasure to see so many taking advantage of the path.
Something that I would like to do is attach labels, to name various trees and bushes along the walking path. The photo here is of a Bunya Bunya Pine tree, one of many at Swanpool that can be seen when walking along the path.
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Travelers towing caravans around Australia should think twice about going to Benalla with their caravan. For more than ten years my partner and I fought to have the town allocate caravan parking areas for tourists, in the end there were two such spaces allotted, 'in a busy car-park'. It was pointed out to the relevant authorities that the spots are to small and to hard to park all but the smallest caravans. The caravan spots are some 300 plus meters from the present 'tourist information' building, never ideal for the elderly or in-firmed.
Another major problem facing caravaners is the fact that the council does not police the two caravan spots, but allows 'all and sundry' to park in these two spaces. It would appear that touists are not encouraged, in fact I have heard 'from the horses mouth' that the council didn't deem Benalla to be a tourist destination, and so didn't need to put in place any tourist infrastructure.
We have also tried for many years to have a tourist bike path put into place to join up those already in place,and being built, in other areas of the North East of Victoria. And the answer has consistently been 'we are not a tourist destination' or we haven't got the money. The Victorian Government has, over the past years, poured millions of dollars into other areas of the state for the very same type of bike paths as we have been wanting for Benalla.
So whilst there is a wonderful man-made lake in Benalla and other splendid tourist destinations in the area, think twice if you have a caravan or wish to cycle around the area.
Caravaners are generally a very astute group of people, and if the are not made welcome they 'go somewhere else' to spend their money. Benalla is missing out on an enormous amount of tourist dollars, and rightly so. So as I said, think twice before making Benalla a stop over.