BENDIGO

A small choir of local school children were singing sweetly as delicate seeds encased in a transparent circular membrane fell gently on us from tree's boughs above. It could have been a scene from a film, so cinematic, the slow falling of the seeds, gentle sunlight escaping through tree leaves onto the ground below and the children singing something about the future, which of course is theirs.

I was in Bendigo yesterday outside one of the historic buildings, its interiors graced with gold leaf, its tall ceiling and beautiful old frescoes or were they murials on the walls, some spakfiller had been applied waiting for a newer image to replace the old. I think we were about half way through the grand tour advanced by my older sister who has lived in Bendigo for about forty years. We'd seen the Law Courts, The Shamrock Hotel were I'd stayed about thirty years ago, the Post Office, St. Paul's Anglican Cathedral with its tall and spikey spires, St. Andrew's Uniting Church, the Bendigo Art Gallery collection & the exhibition at the LaTrobe Visual Ars Centre, just to mention a few.

The tulips were in full bloom outside the Conservatorium and the park nearby just glorious in its spring time splendour. We walked over the small bridge across the creek that runs underneath Pall Mall. It was raining some of the time but not so much that we couldn't still walk around. Many thanks to my niece Michelle Pollard who drove us to Lake Weeroona.

It was still raining, but that only gave the lake an air of mystery. It was such a joy to meet my great nephew and see Bendigo Secondary school which both he and his mother attended. I left Bendigo tired but content and arrived home last night around 7pm after arriving at Southern Cross Station just after 6pm. I'm already planning my next train journey to regional Victoria.