Bendigo, Victoria

 
 
On the Labour Day long weekend in March, Tim and I stayed for three days in Bendigo.  We have been to Bendigo a number of times before, as it is an easy 2 hour train ride from Melbourne, and just has a vibe that we love.
 
My photos are a little eclectic because I have photos of the usual touristy things from other visits.  Some of these photos come from our walking tour with Jill and Pete, two fabulous local guides; others come from our ramblings through Bendigo during our stay.  I hope that you enjoy these photos for a little taste of Bendigo.
 
First up, there are the fruit bats that hang upside down from the trees in their thousands in Rosalind Park, and make the most ungodly twittering noise, while they fan themselves with a wing to keep cool:
 
 
The Bendigo bats are well travelled - scientists tagged three bats that they dubbed Byron, Bradley and Borat to track their travels.  All of them flew for miles, and Byron and Bradley returned to Rosalind Park after their adventures.  Sadly, Borat flew to the Blue Mountains in NSW then dropped off the map.

This is the school up on the hill overlooking Rosalind Park:

 
At the junction of View and Mitchell Streets, there is a very grand fountain smack in the centre of a roundabout:

 
One of the coffee shops had this witty sign out the front - so true:

 
In the alley near the GPO, there is some cool street art going on that is new since I was last in Bendigo (see also the top of this post):

 
This is the Ulumbarra Theatre behind Rosalind Park, where you can catch live performances:

 
I just dug this stained glass window in an Irish Pub:


The gold-rush era lamp posts are embossed with the following:


The Rocks on Rosalind, a restaurant next to our accommodation, revealed its past history as a bank from the goldrush era by this bullet hole in the window:

 
This is one of the ornate churches in Bendigo:

 
Here is The Conservatory in Rosalind Park, which contains lots of beautiful plants and offers cool respite from the heat:

 
Rosalind Park features statues of Queen Victoria and her son, Prince Alfred, who made a rather ill-fated visit to Bendigo for the Easter Parade in 1867, when one of the floats caught fire.  I enjoyed the connection between Queen Victoria's family and Bendigo, as at the time, I was ensconsed in watching the ITV series, Victoria, starring Jenna Coleman.  

Since I was last in Bendigo, they had erected this fountain, known as the Vahland Drinking Fountain, in William Vahland Place:

 
William Vahland, a German architect from Hanover, designed the fountain for Bendigo in the 1870's.  The fountain was originally erected in 1881, but was taken down in the early 1900s.  For a long time, despite their influential role in the development of Bendigo, the Germans were considered persona non gratis because of the wars.  However, William Vahland's contribution to Bendigo as an architect of many of its buildings has now been recognised, and the fountain is surrounded by phrases acknowledging the contribution of German immigrants to Bendigo:

 
 
Finally, here is the old police station, also behind Rosalind Park:


It was wonderful to experience such diversity of experiences while in Bendigo.

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