Back in Australian time not a lot seems to have happened of note. Julia is still holding on, the cricket team is still losing (hehe), and the relentless pursuit of a life dedicated to shorts and barbeques continues apace. The one big change is in the world around me, which was barely more than bare when I went overseas to one which is now flourishing green in e very direction. Unfortunately this applies to weeds and all, which are competing for attention with the newly planted herbs in the backyard. Perfect for numerous spiders and potential snakes.
I may open up my garden as an extension to the Australian National Botanic Gardens, displaying every single type of overgrown weed and bush that you won’t see at the verdant and diligently manicured sister site. Here, a little walk before a big thunderstorm thrust me back into the world of spring, a nice break in between jetlag recovery and catching up.
Back a week, I was on the road again travelling to experience further botanical highlights of the inland in between work needs. Mildura, situated 500 kms north west of Melbourne, 450 kms north east of Adelaide and 1000 kms west of Sydney is, it is fair to say, a long way from anywhere. With this comes its own self sufficiency, a regional centre supplying McDonalds and adult entertainment for miles around. It has its own brewery and celebrity chef, Stefano, but most of all, it has the Murray River.
Here, the Murray is substitute for the sea, the lifeblood for the area, giver of brownish water and irrigation for crops... thousand upon thousand of grape vine, orange groves, veggie patches and seasonal worker. Venture outside of irrigation land and its fruit fly free zone and really we are talking about outback here: arid and harsh and dusty, signature red sand emerging through the gnarled gums and shrubs of the interior visible at Hattah Kulkyne National Park.
The Murray, and its companion Darling, is so important to life out here and to the wellbeing of Australia in general that its never much out of the news. State shenanigans over water allocations come with the territory, and Mildura, Victoria is just across the water from New South Wales, while South Australia is an hour or so west. In New South Wales, the border town of Wentworth is a significant place, at the confluence of the Murray and the Darling rivers, a favourite spot for getting all punned up Blackadder style: clearly it’s the Murray, Darling. Such a landmark is, for once in Australia, understated, and it takes some persistent trekking through scrub and giant grass and reeds to reach.
Wentworth is branded the gateway to the outback, and you sure get a good taste of this just 10 minutes out of town. Perry Sandhills present an entirely different world, a world that spreads from here thousands of miles north and west, a world which awaits discovery, a world that prompts Wentworth to kindly request drivers dump their dust before entering the town streets. A strangely enticing world encouraging you to become consumed in its vastness. But there are other attractions pulling you back...
And so from orange land to Orange World, a celebration of all things oranges on the way back to Mildura. One of those only in Australia places where some enterprising farmer has decided to share his love of citrus, assemble a few wonderfully kitsch artefacts and impress us all with his freshly squeezed juice.
And just how can you beat a smiley orange? Yes, Mildura and environs truly is a splendid world all of its own making.
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