Mildura - A family holiday covering 2 states

[rainbowgirl]

We had BBQ meat a couple of times during our holiday. I love the heat and I'm happy to eat hot food in 40 degree temperatures. I prefer to eat inside however otherwise it feels like I'm eating flies.

Mr Rainbow and Miss 12 did a great job with cooking BBQs and other meals including pasta shell Bolognese, Tuscan chicken and wholemeal pancakes with various toppings.

Miss 7 is the fussiest of all and even she enjoyed most of the food. It was wonderful not having to cook for most of the time. I only had to do a small amount of food preparation.

We had a clear glass dining table which I thought was very unusual. I'm glad I don't have to clean it.

 

[JessicaTam]

Loving a day in the life of family rainbowgirl's holiday.

The shade sails started at IGA (Deakin Ave/10th St) many years ago. It has slowly spread to the other shopping areas. There were hot days when I would choose IGA because of the shade, even if they were slightly dearer!

 

[rainbowgirl]

Loving a day in the life of family rainbowgirl's holiday.

The shade sails started at IGA (Deakin Ave/10th St) many years ago. It has slowly spread to the other shopping areas. There were hot days when I would choose IGA because of the shade, even if they were slightly dearer!

It makes sense that a community minded supermarket would be the first with shade sails. We dropped into the IGA you mentioned above briefly during our stay. I was actually quite impressed by the store. I've been in many IGA's in Melbourne over the years, although I don't shop there on a regular basis. The shops in Melbourne were small, had narrow aisles, were dark, sometimes smelly and felt really out of date. The Mildura IGA was beautiful. Large, clean, fresh smelling, wide aisles, staff who were very helpful, bright lights, plenty of stock, wide variety of stock including brands and varieties which are no longer sold at Woolworths and Coles. We bought a couple of products, a few were more expensive than Woolworths and some were cheaper.

The shade sails looked older than the ones at Coles and Woolworths and some of them had broken away. It may have happened during the windstorm and they were still waiting to be assessed and repaired.

 

[Denali]

I remember last year, we flew SYD-LAX-ATL-SCL-IPC (Easter Island) and my first thought was to get to a local shop to get stuff to make dinner after travelling for 30+hrs (Chicken Pesto and rice). I enjoy hotel/restaurant eating but gotta hit a shop for some basics most trips.

Oh, did you go past any of the painted silo's on your drive up to Mildura? I was just looking at a map for these.

 

[rainbowgirl]

I remember last year, we flew SYD-LAX-ATL-SCL-IPC (Easter Island) and my first thought was to get to a local shop to get stuff to make dinner after travelling for 30+hrs (Chicken Pesto and rice). I enjoy hotel/restaurant eating but gotta hit a shop for some basics most trips.

Oh, did you go past any of the painted silo's on your drive up to Mildura? I was just looking at a map for these.

I lost track of the number of silos we saw on the way to Mildura. Some of them were painted but I was driving at the time so couldn't get a photo. A friend in Melbourne who used to live in Ouyen showed me some photos of the painted silos after we arrived home.

 

[rainbowgirl]

We spent a lot of our time at the lagoon pool during the first 4 days.

I don't swim very often but I enjoy being in the water. My problem is I don't like being wet and not in the water. I also get cold fairly quickly in a pool, even when it is heated. I loved the lagoon pool on the 40 degree plus days. It was warm enough in the water for me and I didn't get cold when I was out of the water. If I got cold in the water I'd get out and lay on my towel on one of the sun lounges.

There was a small outdoor spa and a large indoor spa. I used both of these and enjoyed the indoor spa the most. We also had access to a sauna room.

 

[Flying_man]

This is interesting and very unique trip report. Quite different to other report I have read in here. But then I think - if I can read a report by man who fly in first class, and if I can read a report by lady who take luxury cruise, then also I can read a report about family who have holiday and are very skilled at saving lots of dollars. It is interesting to me.

 

[rainbowgirl]

This is interesting and very unique trip report. Quite different to other report I have read in here. But then I think - if I can read a report by man who fly in first class, and if I can read a report by lady who take luxury cruise, then also I can read a report about family who have holiday and are very skilled at saving lots of dollars. It is interesting to me.

Thank you for your thoughts. My trip report is probably going to be different from other reports but I'm always a little bit different and don't mind showing it. I'll be updating this day by day but life is hectic with school and volunteer work so it might take me over a week to put everything together.

 

[rainbowgirl]

On Sunday afternoon we decided to brave the heat and explore a small part of Mildura. It was so hot I didn't think to take any photos. I was concentrating on keeping everyone happy. I've mentioned before I love the heat but I knew to limit the amount of time we spent in the sun for safety reasons. It got to around 43 in the shade and our car said it was 47 degrees on the road.

Even though we did a big shopping trip on Saturday, we realised we had forgotten a few things and Woolworths didn't have some of the products we wanted. We decided we would do some shopping at Coles after a little exploring and lunch at a cafe.

 

[rainbowgirl]

We got a 3 hours park in a council car park next to the Coles supermarket not far from the river. We ended up near a very dusty building site. We saw a couple of willy willies/mini tornadoes/dust devils form on the ground and rise into the sky. The girls were very fascinated by them and Miss 7 was a little scared. Mr Rainbow explained how they are formed and what they mean. I'm no good at scientific descriptions so I'll leave two links which have photos and more information.

Kid Questions: What Makes Willy-willies?

Dust devil - Wikipedia

 

[rainbowgirl]

I'm not a person who goes to a lot of cafes but being from Melbourne I was used to shops and cafes being open most of the day, including Sunday afternoon. It took us a long time to find a cafe which was open in Mildura on a hot Sunday afternoon. We made a back up plan of going to an ice cream parlour and then going back to the unit for a late lunch but we eventually found a cafe open which had a large selection of food and desserts.

The cafe had great air conditioning and blinds over the windows. The food and service was wonderful. The cafe was in an old building which had been renovated down stairs. I think it was somewhere near Eighth street and Langtree Avenue but I can't remember the exact address. The upstairs area was in the process of being renovated. The toilets were upstairs and the floors creaked. I could see a long hall way which revealed that all the little buildings along this stretch of the road were actually one large old building.

We each chose different food. Miss 7 had eaten before we left so she just had a bowl of chips which she shared with all of us. Miss 12 had some sausage rolls and Mr Rainbow had ham and egg quiche. I had bacon and eggs on toast. This is one of my favourite meals. I usually cook it for everyone when we go on holidays but I knew Mr Rainbow and Miss 12 didn't have it on their menu so I made sure I got some bacon on my holiday. Mr Rainbow had a Kit Kat milkshake for dessert and the rest of us shared some cakes and a vanilla slice. Mr Rainbow didn't finish all of his milkshake so Miss 12 and I shared what was left. The milkshake had a full Kit Kat finger sticking out of the milkshake plus crushed Kit Kat mixed with the milk, ice cream and chocolate syrup.

 

[Denali]

Mmmmmmm.....Country town local bakery sausage rolls!

 

[rainbowgirl]

After lunch we got the rest of our shopping from Coles. We had intended to buy bread at Bakers Delight but the store which used to be next to Coles had closed not long after our previous visit. We attempted to find another Bakers Delight in Mildura but the number we rang was disconnected. We love Bakers Delight bread although I also like the Coles White High Fibre Sandwich bread so that's what we ended up buying at Coles. We go through a lot of bread when we go on holidays. I love butter on toast and can eat it any time of the day.

As it turns out, Flybuys were running a promotion on the weekend offering 4000 points ($20) for a transaction of $200. For some strange reason I didn't know this before we went away. I hadn't realised we were going to spend over $200 on the initial bulk shop so I probably wouldn't have chosen Coles anyway for the main shop. We still got a pretty good deal at Woolworths combining a couple of offer and discounted Wish cards.

After the exploration and the shopping trip we headed back to the unit, went swimming and had a BBQ tea. I think we'll choose a different day of the week next time to explore the cafes and the shops in Mildura.

 

[rainbowgirl]

In my next update we will explore Orange World and figure out the history of Mildura's town planning.

 

[rainbowgirl]

I did some research on Trip Advisor and discovered the cafe we went to was Hudaks Langtree Cafe. It's on the corner of Eighth Street and the Langtree Mall.

Link to Trip Advisor:

Hudaks Langtree Cafe, Mildura - Restaurant Reviews, Phone Number & Photos - TripAdvisor

Miss 7 gets restless when we eat out but she was delighted to find the Kids area and happily played there while we ate.

I confess, I'm not a person who usually leaves tips but the service was so friendly I thanked all the staff who had served us and left a tip in the large tips jar.

 

[JessicaTam]

I am fairly sure Mildura invented roundabouts!

 

[rainbowgirl]

I looked up the history of roundabouts and it sounds like they were invented after the Town Planners, George and William Chaffey created the layout of Mildura. There are certainly lots of roundabouts there now and this is probably a side effect of the way the town was designed back in the 1800s. The newest roundabout in Mildura was a few blocks away from where we were staying and we used it on our way back to the unit on one day. We went exploring the back streets of Mildura, trying to figure out whether the street would continue on to our accommodation.

You may have noticed a theme in the names of the streets JessicaTam and I have been mentioning in our posts on Mildura. The town of Mildura was based on an extensive grid with many of the cross streets having numbers in their name, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, Tenth etc, similar to many American cities. Most of them are very long streets. Many of the other streets have American sounding names. In the roundabout pictured above you can see a reference to Ontario Avenue.

Google Maps

This was named after the city of Ontario in California which was designed by George and William Chaffey, engineers from Canada (yes they were born in the province of Ontario, Canada). They used the same basic design when they designed their new irrigation colony of Mildura. Ontario, like Mildura was famous for it's citrus crops, thanks to the irrigation techniques used.

The bridge connecting Mildura to New South Wales is named The George Chaffey bridge and there are lots of other streets and landmarks named after the Chaffey brothers.

The main street of Mildura is Deakin Avenue. This was named after Alfred Deakin, the second Prime Minister of Australia. They didn't name it after him because he was the Prime Minister. Alfred Deakin was the government minister who travelled to California and asked the Chaffey brothers to come to Australia and design a town based on the irrigation colonies they had established in California.

 

[JessicaTam]

The numbered streets in Mildura start at Seventh St, as First St is in Nichols Point. The avenues are perpendicular to the streets. It made it easier to navigate when I first moved there, knowing that.

 

[rainbowgirl]

Okay, that's enough on the history of Mildura for now. I'm happy to answer questions if you want more history. I tried to keep it short and simple.

I can't do the Orange World report tonight but here are a few more photos to keep you going until next time.

 

[JessicaTam]

I lived in Mildura for 5 years and never made it to Orange World! I did get out to Mungo National Park (NSW) a few times, though.