Stray Tag-a-long Tales: Rest Day at Swan Hill

Today was our rest day and people did different things throughout the day. We decided to start the day with a riverbank walk, learning the history of the place and its people. Hard to believe that the Murray River had up to 222 paddle steamers up and down the river in the1800s - that is until the railway came and the river wasn't used as a transport stream anymore.

The Murray River at Swan Hill.

The other claim to fame is that Charlie Gray came from here. I hear you say who was Charlie Gray? Well good friends he was a member of the Burke and Wills expedition with the sad reputation as to the first to perish on this ill-fated expedition.
After this we helped Maureen and Ray, once again, restock and sort the goods for our final leg of the tour. (Only 3 more breakfasts Maureen, please 'hang' in there! No I don't want the Cook's job - EVER!)
We then had a lovely lunch in downtown Swan Hill before heading out to an interesting museum in Woorinen owned and operated by a fascinating fellow by the name of Sid Brown.
Now Sid is quite a character with a history in Speedway cars, road Cycling racing - "never any good at the velodrome stuff". His hobby these days is collecting and restoring old trinkets and all sorts of memorabilia: from his Lodge days, old bikes to setting up his 1950's style kitchen! He even has some tools built in the 1800's. He makes his own model cars, hand-building everything on them, even down to the chroming on the bumper-bars.

Step back in time to the 1950's. Sad, but I can remember the lino on the floor!

His collection started as a hobby as a young lad of 14y.o. collecting bottle tops of which he proudly displays in his museum today. His pride-of-joy is a hand-winding gramophone from the 1700's of which he displayed the talents of the machine just before we left to come back home. The 'cylinder' on which it plays is one of 100 he has collected.
The worth of this place would be priceless as he has put his heart and soul into the place hoping his daughter and grand-daughter will continue his legacy over the next generations. There is no cost to this place, just a gold coin donation of which he then donates to the local fire-brigade. He has been offered a great deal of money for some of his stuff but says "some of this has been donated to me, so I'm certainly not going to sell it and make money from that!" A lovely attitude in a very materialistic society. A genuine gentleman. Thank-you Sid! I'm not generally a museum type person, but this was worth the time and donation.

Sid and his collection of bottle-tops

I must mention also that as we were unsure of how to get to this place, Paul asked that I put the address into the Navman and the little lady in the machine would take us there. (He didn't trust my directions: but that is another story!) Well we did finally get there even if we had to go 4WDing down a water-logged farmer's lane, getting splattered with mud and looking like we just came down from the mountains. Ah, the joys of the Navman!
Tomorrow we leave along the Murray to Echuca so until we meet again.
PS - Don't forget to check-out Cowboy's Page for his latest installment - very funny!