MILDURA

Under dark and threatening clouds we packed up and drove through more mallee scrub and eventually came the familiar, burgeoning and abundant vinyards and orchards.
Their visitors centre shared a large building with the local library and acquatic centre.
Confusingly Mildura is south of the Murray -therefore in Victoria - and nearby suburbs to the north are classed as New South Wales - wow our GPS was very confused - as were we at first.
The first day trip we took was to nearby Wentworth where the Darling River merges with the Mighty Murray - it's called a confluence. Once again much of this area's history happened around here with Captain Sturt and other explorers, surveyors, then pastoralists and
Wentworth became one of Australias busiest ports in river-boat history.
It was quite fascinating to us to try to see the effect of this confluence of all rivers west of the Great Dividing Range.
The other fascinating thing we learned was that much of the mallee scrub in this area was cleared and lots of this most fertile land plus a Fergie tractor were given to returning WW2 soldiers.
In the devastating floods of 1956 the 'fergies' were used to build massive levees to protect much of Wentworth and there are monuments to honour their work.
'By God and by Fergies' is their motto.
The Perry Sandhills nearby originated after and Ice Age - 40,000 years ago and they are formed and reformed by wind erosion. They are a unique and continually shifting range covering approx 400 acres, they were used as a bombing range in WW2 and are the location of filming of many scenes from The Man from Snowy River, Burke and Wills, Flying Doctors and Boney and also used for many television commercials.
We climbed them and marvelled at the nearby Murray River Gum estimated to be 500 years old.
At the Pioneer Museum in the town were many interesting historical exhibits including replicas and fossils of Australias mega-fauna - all large - bear animal, kangaroo, marsupial lion, giant emu and goanna, wombat, bilby and bettong.