Mildura - A family holiday covering 2 states

[rainbowgirl]

Recently our family of 4 went to sunny Mildura. We had 4 days of temperatures over 40 and a few days of 20 something degrees. Mr Rainbow, Miss 7, Miss 12 and I went up and back by road with the driving shared between Mr Rainbow and I.

This is my first trip report. I'm a little bit different to the majority of AFF members. I don't fly very often. The last time I was in a plane was Melbourne to Sydney in 2006 when Miss 12 was 3 months old. We then went by train on to Newcastle for the weekend. Most of my posts on AFF are in the Woolworths Rewards and Flybuys threads and I warn you now there will be discussions of shopping and supermarket reward points. I'll post a few photos today and give updates during the week once the girls go back to school.

 

[rainbowgirl]

Of course, rainbowgirl has a rainbow pool towel

 

[rainbowgirl]

Mildura sunset over the palm trees.

 

[rainbowgirl]

Photos of paddle steamers will be posted later in the thread.

 

[rainbowgirl]

We left home on Australia day at 8.30am. Eight hours on the road isn't usually the way we spend Australia Day but I thought it was appropriate. We got to see lots of Australian places and culture along the way. This was our second trip to Mildura. The first one was 4 years ago. Miss 7 doesn't remember much of it so she enjoyed seeing everything for the "first" time. We stopped in Ravenswood for morning tea, Wycheproof for Lunch and Ouyen for afternoon tea. Last time we had to stop 5 or 6 times including a couple of unplanned toilet breaks. We brought our food and drink with us including plenty of water and ice. We had 6 water bottles, a large thermos with ice and water and 2 small thermoses. The ice in the thermoses stayed solid until the evening. I'd heard lots of stories of motorists being stranded without enough water and I didn't want to end up in that position.

The girls mostly enjoyed the car trip. They were quite talkative but also slept for some of the drive when I put the cricket on. Cricket has always been a part of Australia day for me so it was great to follow it by radio on the drive and with the TV in the bedroom later in the evening.

We did make a quick stop just before Mildura to get rid of our fruit and some of our vegetables. I hadn't realised so many fruits and vegetables couldn't be brought into the area. We ate some fruit during this stop so didn't have to throw out very much. I think the Fruit Fly exclusion zone has grown in the last 20 years.

We arrived at our accommodation around 4.30pm and were glad to get into our air conditioned unit. It had been over 40 degrees on the road and the car air conditioning was starting to struggle by the end of the trip. There was a pool party going on to celebrate Australia Day when we arrived but we decided to unpack and relax inside rather than swim in the pool. The air conditioning in the unit was fantastic. You'd never know it was so hot outside once you were inside the unit. We had a downstairs unit so this also kept things much cooler.

 

[rainbowgirl]

Miss 7 wanted to know why the people in Mildura loved Palm Trees so much. I didn't have a good answer to that so I just said that Mildura was one of the few places in Victoria where Palm Trees would grow.

 

[rainbowgirl]

We had a windstorm/duststorm on the first night. The temperature dropped into the 30s during the storm and then went back up over 40 once the storm was over. It came up quite unexpectedly and people started running back from the pool to their units. It didn't last very long but was quite a fascinating experience.

 

[JessicaTam]

I used to live in Mildura so I am looking forward to how it looks now.

It does have great sunsets.

 

[kermatu]

As a kid (a few years ago now) we did two summer driving holidays that encompassed Mildura, Swan Hill and surrounds between Melbourne and Adelaide. My abiding memories are 1-The heat; 2-sitting in the rear-facing seats of our Volvo station wagon with my sister so constantly waving to cars behind us; and 3-fabulous Australian towns, scenery and characters.

Looking forward to the rest of your TR.

 

[rainbowgirl]

The Mallee Stump in Ouyen.

 

[rainbowgirl]

I'm learning lots of new things while doing this trip report. I now know how to log into AFF on my smartphone. I now know how to upload photos onto AFF. I also discovered the photo editor on my Android smartphone. I've had it for 4 years and I've only just figured out I can make lots of changes to the photos.

I don't know why the Giant Mallee Stump photos originally posted the wrong way but I've put up a post with the Ouyen photos the right way around. I've left the original post there as a way of showing that I'm capable of learning new things but I'm not afraid of showing I can make mistakes.

EDIT: Support deleted the original post in response to the report I made yesterday. Thank you.

I'm using 2 different computers to produce this Trip Report. I read the info thread which suggested ideas for Trip Reports and now have lots of great ideas.

If you want more details on the information I post on Mildura and surrounding areas, please let me know. If you have questions, please feel free to ask. I'll do my best to answer.

 

[Denali]

First I had to look up where Mildura was!

 

[JessicaTam]

I'm learning lots of new things while doing this trip report. I now know how to log into AFF on my smartphone. I now know how to upload photos onto AFF. I also discovered the photo editor on my Android smartphone. I've had it for 4 years and I've only just figured out I can make lots of changes to the photos.

I don't know why the Giant Mallee Stump photos originally posted the wrong way but I've put up a post with the Ouyen photos the right way around. I've left the original post there as a way of showing that I'm capable of learning new things but I'm not afraid of showing I can make mistakes.

I'm using 2 different computers to produce this Trip Report. I read the info thread which suggested ideas for Trip Reports and now have lots of great ideas.

If you want more details on the information I post on Mildura and surrounding areas, please let me know. If you have questions, please feel free to ask. I'll do my best to answer.

Darn, I can't like a post, agree with it, and say it is informative at the same time!

First I had to look up where Mildura was!

View attachment 117631

I hope you don't rely on that map for your travel planning. Mildura is actually south of the Murray, in Victoria.

 

[rainbowgirl]

We were tired after the long drive and decided to go to Red Rooster for tea. It's one fast food place that all of us enjoy. We are a family of fussy eaters. Mr Rainbow enjoys a wide variety of foods but has allergies so it's hard to find an eating place where all of us can order foods we like.

I used my Red Royalty card to get a few dollars off our meal. I prefer this card to the Maccas app program. I get a few dollars off on the Red Rooster program for most meals. I don't like the Maccas program where you have to buy specific foods to get a good deal. I started off using the Red Rooster app but it didn't work well with my phone. Apparently other customers couldn't get the app working either. I like the idea of plastic cards. I have plenty of space in my wallet for cards so I don't have to worry about losing them.

You'll notice in my trip report that I use tea as our name for the main evening meal that many people call dinner. My parents used the word tea instead of dinner for this meal. Dinner to us was another name for lunch. I don't know whether this is because of our Welsh/Irish background or whether it was because I read too much Enid Blyton where lunch was referred to as dinner.

 

[Denali]

Am I at least in the general vicinity?

 

[rainbowgirl]

First I had to look up where Mildura was!

View attachment 117631

That map is on the Orange World website. I don't know where it originally came from. I think some of the other towns are also out of place but I'm not certain. I'll get to the Orange World photos later in the report.

 

[rainbowgirl]

Mildura is in Victoria but many of the local tourist destinations near it are in New South Wales. South Australia is only a day trip away. We didn't make it to Renmark, South Australia this time but hopefully we can visit 3 states for our Mildura trip the next time we go there.

 

[rainbowgirl]

We had a full kitchen at our unit so we had most of our meals there. That meant we did a big shopping trip on our first full day in Mildura. This is the first time we've done a big shop in 40 degree temperatures. We go on one or two holidays a year so we're used to doing this shop.

Before we got to Mildura I decided we'd do our main shopping trip at Woolworths. Our unit was close to Woolworths, Coles and IGA and we visited each of these during our stay. The car park at Woolworths was fairly crowed but we managed to get a parking spot eventually. All the parking at the supermarkets and the nearby KMart is outdoors but covered with shade sails. You can only park for 2 or 3 hours at a time which was long enough for us to do our shopping but it meant if we wanted to do other exploring we had to find street parking. I don't know how old the shade sails were. They were there 4 years ago but I'm not used to having shade when I park my car at the supermarket.

I'm guessing the shade sails are there due to the amount of sunshine. Maybe the supermarkets were trying to attract customers and wanted them to feel safe while parking their car. There was probably a time where some supermarkets had shade sail parking and others didn't. There were shade sails in lots of other places in Mildura as well.

Usually when we go shopping on holidays we spend about $130 to $160 on supermarket supplies depending on which fruits and vegetables are in season and how many meals we are going to have fast food and how many we have at the unit or as picnic lunches. This time we were doing things a bit differently. Usually we take lots of pantry supplies in the car or cars with us. If we go on holiday at a location one or two hours from home, I bring my car with me so I can pack extra stuff or do my own quiet activities without the family around. This time, however we had to keep the pantry supplies to a minimum due to storage issues in the car. We were also doing the food preparation differently this time. Usually I do nearly all of the food preparation and I know exactly what foods I want and how to get them cheaply. This holiday Mr Rainbow and Miss 12 were going to be doing all the cooking which meant they got to choose most of the foods at the supermarket. As a consequence, the first shopping trip was over $200. We bought a lot of herbs and spices for the cooking as well as things like baking powder. If Mr Rainbow and Miss 12 had planned the menu before we left, we could have found tiny containers for these items and carried them with us, saving about $20 or so.

We spend more on food on holiday than we do at home but I still like to make the best of the loyalty programs when we are on holiday. It's harder to take up targeted offers while on holiday but sometimes I get lucky and get the right offer at the right time. Mr Rainbow had an offer on his Woolworths Rewards card of 2200 points for a transaction of $145 or more. Usually our offers are for much less than this but I used Mr Rainbows card for a shopping trip with the girls during the holidays and ended up spending over $100. That's why the next targeted offer on that card was so high. Usually I only spend the minimum amount when taking up targeted offers but as it was a holiday shop and I wanted to relax I put through everything on one transaction. We also had a triple points offer as well so we got some bonus points on the excess spend. All up we got 2818 points for the transaction which is about $14 value if used as Woolworths dollars or more if converted to QFF points.

 

[rainbowgirl]

We were exhausted after the shopping so spent most of the afternoon and evening at the outdoor lagoon pool.

 

[Major]

Looks like a bit of fun