We set off at about 10am on Saturday, going via the Calder Freeway instead of the Hume Highway for previous races in Echuca and Wangaratta. After being stuck at 80 km/h on the way out of Melbourne the rest of the drive was 110 km/h, so it was definitely the better route to take. About 60 kilometres out of Bendigo, at Kyneton, we had a quick driver swap as my leg was killing from the ongoing shin pain I've been dealing with. There wasn't much in Kyneton except for an awesome fishing shop called It's A Trap, the only downside was that they didn't have Admiral Ackbar on the sign.
It took a little over two hours to get to Bendigo, just in time for lunch at the Beechworth Bakery. The menu was the same as the other store, so there wasn't many vegetarian options and I just went with the cheese and spinach roll again. I also tried the bee sting pastry this time which was pretty good, like a custard donut with a bit of honey.
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| What the sign says. |
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| Lunch. |
Just down the road was the Central Deborah Gold Mine which has a few underground mine tours. The shortest one was seventy five minutes so we went with that. Before the tour starts you can look around at some buildings outside - I'd only decided to bring shorts for the trip and it was freezing cold and windy, so it wasn't much fun leaving the indoors. One of the buildings was an information centre which had this incredibly annoying audio recording playing at the entrance, it ran for about twenty seconds on an endless loop - "Gold! Gold! Gold!", I was about to go crazy after about five minutes of listening to that. There was a few magnets in the gift shop, but I thought I'd wait and see what I found around town instead.
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| Gold Mine buildings. |
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| Gold Mine tower.. |
The tour kicked off then, I thought we might be the only people on the tour but there was actually about fifteen so it was alright. After being given the required hard hats and lights we were taken down to the "second" level which was something like twenty floors beneath the surface. I thought it might be damp, humid or something else interesting, but it was just normal. The tour guide walked us through the tunnels, showing off various equipment and stopping for other fun facts and stuff. She did a pretty good job overall, although I can't imagine anyone doing that job for long before you'd start to go mad, particularly since you'd be spending all day underground - can we be happy?
We drove into the city centre next, which was a couple of kilometres away, passing the huge Sacred Heart Cathedral along the way. I thought it would just be one main street but it was a lot bigger than that. A bit of rain started up to add to the poor conditions, so I didn't get to do as much exploring as I would have liked. I walked past the Golden Dragon Museum, the first Myer store - which is now just a regular Myer store like any other, and down to the corner of Pall Mall and Charing Cross - if those names sound familiar it's because they are both stolen from London.
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| Charing Cross. |
On the way to Hargreaves Mall I passed the big Bendigo Bank HQ building, which was pretty modern and artistic looking. In the mall I found a froyo store! Even though it was wintery weather I stopped in for a snack, the banana flavour was pretty good.
We drove back to the motel next, which was actually in Kangaroo Flat, about 6-8 kilometres south of Bendigo - since very few accommodation options were listed online. The motel was nothing special but it was pretty cheap and had Foxtel sports channels, which is all you need for one night.
After dropping everything off we drove back to Bendigo to check out the race route around town. After completing this I was a little worried about one section - it was about a kilometre of medium difficulty incline without a break. It was close enough to dinner time by now, so we went to Jag's Grill which was an American style restaurant with a vegetable burger and nachos on the menu - an impossible decision. I went with nachos and a side order of chips since I thought it might be a little more carb friendly for the race, and Jason got some chicken burger, the meals were pretty good.
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| Nachos with chipotle beans. |
After overloading on food we went back to the hotel to catch the double feature of NBA on replay and got ready for the race in the morning.
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