Bendigo seems to love tempting fate in Rosalind Park.
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Two weeks ago, we held the massive Easter egg hunt with about three kajillion kiddies, somewhat near the acclaimed House of Mirrors art installation which quite a few Bendigonians have reported bamboozled the living daylights out of them.
And today, on the last weekend of the mirrored maze, we go and plonk (excuse the pun) a Bendigo winemakers festival next to it. Seventeen winemakers, 60 wines, and a mob of happy people celebrating the end of the harvest. Again: what could go wrong?
Ah well, at least we note they have kiddies’ activities at the winemakers festival which will give the tackers something to do while Mum and Dad try to find their way out of the House of Mirrors.
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Speaking of wine, Down The Mall is proud of the fact that grapes were grown in our neck of the woods at least as far back as the discovery of gold in 1851.
There are indications that the liquid gold pre-dated the discovery of the metallic stuff. How do we know this?
In 1864 The Age reporter, Ebenezer Ward, was given the assignment of a lifetime to document the extent of the new Victorian wine industry. Naturally, being a scribe, this noble task took quite a while.
His fact-finding mission tracked down 40 vineyards between the Bullock Creek and the Campaspe River. He reckoned he found some vines near the Campaspe which could not have been less than 14 or 15 years old, placing their planting around 1850 – before gold was found here.
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It’s been a big week in science news. First, we had news that the Chinese were in negotiations with the European Space Agency about building a human settlement on the Moon.
Then, came the news that the University of California had shown how the first humans to live on Mars could live in brick houses made from hammered Martian soil. Does it seem a little out of kilter that we can solve housing problems on the Moon or Mars, but not in Australia? Maybe we’re just not asking the right people.