Welcome to our 2023 Mainland Holiday Blog.

Hello & welcome to our blog of our 2023 Australian mainland holiday.

We have a few overseas followers who follow our adventures, so we are including details of roads & locations as we know they follow us on Google Earth.

We left on Sunday June 11^th & had a good overnight sailing.

Saying Goodbye to Stephen’s parents.

Over the next 3 days we caught up with Trevor & Scot and also Michel, Gopi & our first granddaughter, Evelyn.

Today we said goodbye to Gopi, Michel and Evelyn and travelled through Geelong and onto the Hamilton Highway heading west to Lismore. Lismore is a small service town for a pastoral area which is notable for its wool, lamb, canola and cereal crops. The district is characterised by Lake Corangamite and ancient volcanoes including Mount Widderin and Mount Elephant.

Lismore is located 166 km west of Melbourne on the Hamilton Highway and 41 km north-east of Camperdown. When the area was first settled by Europeans the village was known as Brown’s Water Holes. When it was surveyed in 1852 it was renamed Lismore. It is thought it was named after Lismore in County Waterford, Ireland. Stephen had his first “silly photo” of the trip.

The Lismore Water Tower in Victoria was painted by Jimmi Buscombe in February 2020.

The tower portrays two dancing Brolgas, one magnificent proud male and his female beside him, which are a native bird to the area, sitting in a misty field with some sheep in the distance. 

Plants around the base are Blue Devin, Feather Heads, Bright Heads, Agapanthus and Chocolate Lilies, all also native to the area.

We then headed north through Skipton, Beaufort to Avoca. Avoca is a former gold mining town. The Avoca region is home to an established agricultural and winery industry thanks to its Mediterranean climate, good soil and running streams.

The Avoca silo artwork depicts the Australian Barking Owl, a bird native to the local Pyrenees Ranges.

The Avoca silo displays the first glow in the dark artwork in the Australian Silo Art Trail…and possibly the world!

The silo has two separate glow in the dark features that can be experienced after dark. First, set behind the owl is a Glow in the dark starburst sky. The starburst sky and the owls’ eyes both glow in the dark when charged by the silos installed floodlights.

There is also an interactive 

glow wall set on the Pyrenees Ranges below the owl where you can draw your own artworks using nothing more than light from a torch or phone torch.

We have overnighted at a free camp in Avoca because we wished to check out the silo art after dark.

Quaint letterbox in Avoca.