Blue Lotus

This was the focus of my travel eastward:

Blue Lotus Water Garden. The garden is amazing, and getting there early on such a hot day was a good idea. We were able to see everything before the very hottest part of the day.

Not a lotus, not blue, but this is the plant known as the blue lotus, Nymphaea nouchali:

Native to southern and eastern parts of Asia, and the national flower of Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

Lotus

Lotus

Lotus

Lotus as far as the eye can see:

Several greenhouses provide sheltered environments for plants from the tropics, which need warmer water than usually found in this part of the world. This is the "crocodile plant", Euryale ferox:

Its amazing leaves unfold into a large flat disc covered in sharp spines that look like rose thorns.

The blue aster waterlily needs water over 24 degrees to survive:

Its leaves are almost as lovely as the flower.

Another tropical waterlily:

Today was such a hot sticky day that we felt like we were in the tropics even outside the greenhouses. Here's my friend enjoying one of the many welcome shade pavilions dotted around the gardens:

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you may remember my disappointment last year that the Amazon waterlilies were not on display at the Adelaide Botanic Gardens. But thanks to the Blue Lotus Garden, I have now seen one:

Hooray!

A leaf beginning to unfurl, a flower just opening, and what looks like a bud emerging:

The Amazon waterlily was a highlight for me.

We ate lunch at the cafe at Kuranga Native Nursery in Mt Evelyn. The nursery has a lovely display of plants and garden goodies:

  
I had to restrain myself as I had a long train journey ahead. So my only purchase was:

Melaleuca nesophila, which was labelled with the common name of Western tea-myrtle. (If you are reading this, Sue, this might be the plant in your neighbour's garden.)

When I got back to Ballarat I found that scans had uncovered some new issues with Mum. That bad news made me glad I had taken this wonderful short break away. It was easier to face the situation when feeling refreshed from spending time seeing and doing such interesting things.

Water

Beautiful irises in the grounds of our motel in Kaniva, glowing in the early morning sunshine:

Kaniva unfortunately does not have drinkable water, although I did find a news story that suggested they might have by 2021. However in the meantime, a huge amount of industrial waste has been buried illegally on a property in the area, which has the potential to pollute the groundwater supply for the whole district. EPA info here: Illegal waste dump. Nice!

The motel provided bottles of drinkable water, but having to use bottled water for cleaning your teeth made this feel a bit like being in India.

Time to get back on the road!

When we drove past this lake on the first day of our trip, it was bright pink. We thought we better stop on the way home to get a good look at this amazing sight.

But this morning it wasn't looking pink at all:

Once we got down to the shore, though, the pink became visible:

Salt-loving red bacteria create the pink colour. There's been a little bit of rain here while we've been away, which must have diluted the lake and the bacteria. No doubt the bright pink will return as water evaporates in the forecast heat today and tomorrow.

Our next stop was this nursery:

Back in August when we visited the Clarkesdale Bird Sanctuary we saw a honeybush, Hakea lissocarpha, in flower, and I thought at the time I would love to get hold of one for our garden. When I searched online, the Wimmera Native Nursery in Dimboola was about the only place I found it. They do sell plants online, but it was more fun to stop in:

They have a large selection of native plants, so as well as a couple of honeybushes we bought some eremophilas, grevilleas, other hakeas, and a callistemon. They are all destined for a planned "bird bed", a garden bed of shrubby plants to provide shelter and food for small birds. As well as looking good, of course.

(Several days after we got home, one of our neighbours asked if we had been at this nursery, because she had driven past and seen our car there. You just never know who might be keeping an eye on you.)

Our next stop was at the home of fellow quilter and garden lover Sue, whose blog is Mother Patchwork. Sue gave us a cuppa, then a tour of her lovely garden. She even generously dug up some pieces of alstroemeria for me, and gave me a pot of a recently divided aloe. Thank you, Sue!

Our last stop (other than collecting the dogs from the kennels) was in Stawell, where we got lunch at a fish and chip shop recently voted among the top 20 in Victoria. News article. You can't read the article without subscribing, but you can see the photo.

This was my view as I sat outside waiting for our food. It was nice to have a shady spot to sit, as the sun was bright and strong and quite warm by then.

The food was worth the wait - very yummy.

I took no photos of the rest of the day. But it involved collecting the dogs, who were overjoyed to see us, then heading home to a problem that we could have done without.

On about the first morning we were away, Graeme was checking the monitoring he has on various things around our house, and discovered that about 100 litres of water was leaving our water tank each hour. Fortunately our neighbour was able to come and turn off the water pump to stop any more water being lost. But once we were home we had to arrange for the plumber to come and sort out the leak (again).

Until it is fixed, the water pump is off. Having a shower (which I needed when we got home) involves turning on the pump, having your shower, then turning off the pump straight away. Best accomplished with the help of a friend - you don't want to run down to the tank, which is right near the road at the front of our block, wrapped in a towel!

Eyes on the Road

Here's our first stop today:

The National Motor Museum. It is a lot more interesting that I thought it might be! I was expecting rows and rows of cars. There is a bit of that, of course, but there are also special displays on the social aspects of motoring - how motor vehicles have affected life in this country.

The front entrance is through this actual old service station, which was bought in the 1920s as a prefab from the USA:

When it was going to be demolished it was rescued, restored and reassembled for the museum.

How about this driving outfit?

Fortunately in the Jag we don't need special clothing to protect us from dust, wind and rain!

This display celebrates Aboriginal "bush mechanics" and the art of keeping vehicles going in the outback until they have had it:

Other displays feature drive-ins, travelling hawker vans, outback mail adventures, Alice Anderson's all-women garage, as well as of course a huge range of vehicles.

Cute ones like this 1957 Isetta bubble car:

And very snazzy ones like this Bugatti Veyron:

The fastest production car in Australia. But who needs to travel at 460km/hour?

After eating our picnic lunch in a cemetery - maybe an odd place, but they had a nice shelter and seats there - we hit the road towards Victoria.

We took a break at Coonalpyn, to investigate the rest of their public arts trail that we missed on the way here. Here's the northern end of the silos, which we didn't see before:

"Coonalpyn on Show" was a display of appliquéd panels made by a local sewing group and the primary school, but the shop where it had been on display was empty. "Growing Coonalpyn" is a garden display, but we didn't find it.

The one art project we did find is "Eyes on the Road":

 An eagle's face made of 3,200 bits of folded and painted metal:

It probably looks better when the sun isn't so bright behind it.

Our next stop was Bordertown. On our way I had seen some "Cup o Flora" wicking pots for sale in a shop there, but didn't buy one. Of course later I thought I should have. Fortunately the shop was still open when we drove back through this afternoon, and I bought a couple to try with my African violet babies when they have grown a bit.

Our overnight stop is Kaniva. Like many country towns, Kaniva was once a thriving town but now there are many empty shops. Along the main street there are history panels showing businesses that used to exist:

Several grocery stores, greengrocers, a couple of stock agents, butchers, all sorts of clothing stores have disappeared.

This church is now a garden:

Some businesses have only recently closed down:

But bizarrely, there is a puppet shop looking quite prosperous:

Unfortunately it is closed on Mondays, so we couldn't check it out. It could be that they do a lot of their business online.

Kaniva's tourist attraction is a flock of decorated sheep along the main street. Details here. The sheep were painted by community groups and businesses. Here are a few of them:

 I thought they were pigs when I first saw them.

 Apparently they are based on Texel sheep, which are lean meat sheep.

Only another 300km of our road trip to go. We will be home tomorrow afternoon.

Adelaide

As the restaurant at our motel doesn't open on weekends (!), and the room had only tea and coffee making facilities, we had to find somewhere else for breakfast. So we did something completely wacky, and went to Ikea!

Being still on Victorian time, we got there over half an hour before they opened, but the car has the ability to entertain us:

It has a TV! We watched a guy travelling between Bucharest and Instanbul by train, eating interesting things along the way, on SBSFood. We have tried the TV once before in Ballarat, but the signal was poor or something and it was unwatchable. But here, it was fine.

Although we thought breakfasting at Ikea was a wacky idea, apparently that is a thing people do. There were quite a few waiting outside by the time the store opened, and most of them went straight to the restaurant.

After breakfast and a wander through Ikea we headed off to the Adelaide Botanic Garden. The first section we encountered was the rose garden:

The roses were looking pretty good. At home ours only have buds, but Adelaide is well ahead of us.  Included in this section (but not labelled, and no signs anywhere about it) is the National Rose Trial Garden. This was established in 1996 to test new roses and promote those most suited to Australian growing conditions.

One rose I was very taken with was this one:

It is a ground-cover rose, which the bees loved. The flowers open with that deep colour, and gradually fade to almost white. It is planted in a large patch, and the colour variation across it looks fantastic. Of course there are no signs anywhere to say what it is! However, with a bit of googling, I think it is probably "Eye Shadow", which won the gold medal and several other prizes in the trials in 2016.

A few other highlights of the gardens.

The beautiful old Palm House, built in the 1870s, is now a dry hot-house full of plants from Madagascar:

There are two large wisteria walks, both just about finished now, but enough remains to be impressive:

One of the gates into the gardens is the ginkgo gate:

And yes, just inside there is a ginkgo tree:

There is a whole section of eremophilas (emu bushes). This one caught my eye:

And it was labelled, so I know it is a grafted Eremophila cunefolia, which comes from Western Australia.

The Museum of Economic Botany is in the gardens. The building is from the 1880s, as is most of the collection of plant materials useful to humans. Part of the building also contains temporary exhibitions. The current one is on grain crops grown and used by Aboriginal people before European settlement.

 The fascinating old display cases are arranged by plant family. Here is a sample:

Linen fibres and flax seeds in the foreground, and some amazing pinecones in the background. You could spend ages examining all the displays in this beautiful building. We did!

Several years ago I learned that these gardens have the giant Amazon waterlily on display, so really wanted to see that. However, this is what confronted me:

No waterlilies here!

Empty for repairs. That was a disappointment. But the rest of the gardens did not disappoint at all.

It is a wonderful garden!


After the gardens we headed out of Adelaide, towards our stop for the night. But who could resist stopping at this tourist trap:

It's the world's largest rocking horse!

Although it doesn't actually rock.

Our stop for tonight feels like the world's largest motel room:

It is enormous! And quiet and very comfortable. It is the Birdwood Motel, and it is right beside tomorrow's first attraction.