To Australia, Part 2

We continue the story of our mysterious travelers, having left them in Perth. It's hard to tell exactly what happens next. There are photos of another ship, and no photos of any overland travel through Australia, so I'm guessing at least some of them boarded another vessel and headed eastward.

Google tells me another photo of an old building was taken in Mount Barker, which is outside Adelaide. So it's possible they docked in that region. But I'm not convinced Google is right, and the Mount Barker photos aren't that good -- blurry and lopsided. The first real clue we get about location comes from the photo above.

When I saw the word Bendigo on that bus, I figured it had to be a neighborhood or some other locality in Australia. Turns out, it's a whole city, north of Melbourne in Victoria.

And here we are, in Bendigo. There are quite a few photos from this area, so I'm thinking this is where at least one of our travelers was based.

The photos include several great street scenes of the town. Here's a modern view of this same streetscape. As you can see, many of the buildings remain today, including the Shamrock Hotel, the structure with the fancy roof in the background.

Another view of Bendigo. Here's the same row of buildings today. Astonishingly, that Myers store still exists, though they seem to have dropped the "S" off the name at some point.

And here's the street looking the other direction, during what appears to be a Remembrance Day or ANZAC Day parade. You can see the Hotel Shamrock in the background. The two-level structure between that and the Myers store, which I believe was called the Hotel Australia, is gone now. Here's the modern view.

And here's the old Bendigo post office, which is now used as a tourist information center.

There are other photos of Bendigo, too -- in the nearby public gardens and outside the adjacent law courts. So, as I said, it seems like our travelers spent quite a bit of time there. Or at least took a lot of photos.

There are also visits to the countryside, though -- perhaps I should call it the "bush" -- including a series of pictures of these men employing a scary-looking saw to cut down trees. I'd have been hiding in the long grass, too!

After all that, it's time for a cuppa.

There are photos of some of the women with livestock and/or on a farm. Perhaps this was a visit to relatives, because the travelers seem a bit unaccustomed to being around cows.

Finally, there are some scenes of travel within southern Australia. I thought the Buffalo View Hotel was a curious name until I realized they weren't talking about the animal -- Mount Buffalo is a place, and is now a national park. This hotel used to be in the nearby town of Porepunkah.

And here's the Mount Buffalo Chalet, a historic structure that still stands, but endured a long period of disuse in recent years. Apparently it is set to reopen (or perhaps already has). You can see the snow on the hedges -- there are several pictures of our travelers cavorting in snow and building a snowman. I had no idea it ever snowed in Australia, so this was eye-opening for me.

The snowy scenes are the last images in the album, which has several more blank pages before the end. For whatever reason, the person who kept it didn't take any more pictures. Did they remain in Australia, or come back to England? It's hard to tell.

Perhaps one clue is that luggage tag I mentioned yesterday. If you're in southern Australia and you're traveling to Darwin, in the far north, that seems to suggest you may be headed back to Europe. My suspicion is that our traveler went home again. It must have been after a period of at least several months, given that the photos of their outgoing voyage seem to have been taken in winter (remember the coats in Italy?) and they experienced a wintry season in Australia, as well. But who knows?

I will eventually upload all these photos to Flickr, along with more from the album. Once I've done that I'll post a link so you can check out the rest. Thank you, C., for prompting this fascinating exploration!