Mildura, Pt 166 (Pictures)

Mildura’s biggest claim to fame is Stephano de Pieri, an Italian immigrant who has become the Australian equivalent of Emeril Lugassi as a chef, entrepreneur and TV personality. We considered dining at his restaurant, which serves a 5-course meal for 77$/person, but decided to take a 2 hour steam-powered riverboat cruise and eat at some of the less prestigious establishments – many of which are owned by Stephano.

The cruise on the Paddle Steamer Melbourne, built in 1912 and powered by a wood-fired engine, was wonderful. Restored in 1965, it has been doing tours for 40 years. The girl taking boarding fees is the granddaughter of the owner and former captain, her uncle captains some days and her mother runs the business. There are now a host of other paddle boats (side-wheelers as opposed to stern-wheelers) on the River Murray at Mildura. One of them is another restaurant (Avoca) owned by Stephano. There are also huge luxury houseboats. With a system of locks, the Murray is navigable for hundreds of miles.

The cruise started out by going through Lock 11, the most used of the 16 operating locks on the system. Luckily it is now hydraulically powered. Passengers formally needed to get out and crank the gates manually. Wildlife along the Murray is still abundant. We saw snake-necked darters (like a cormorant with a long neck), whistling kites, pelicans, actual cormorants, welcoming sparrows, turtles and several other birds. The Murray is also one of the 10 most-endangered rivers in the world. Extraction of water for crop irrigation and pollution with salty irrigation water are the main problems. Drought is not helping. We met tourists from New Zealand. (It was less expensive for them to fly from the South Island to Australia than to New Zealand’s North Island!)

We ate a tasty lunch at 27 Deakin Street, a Stephano-owned deli/store. I also found a nice Internet Café a few doors up the street. (We are still wondering if we got a parking ticket for overstaying the 15 minute limit. They just send the tickets to the vehicle’s registered owner.) Cheryl caught up on some shopping while I was on line. Then we visited Woodsie’s Rock Shop, easily the most enthusiastically decorated gem shop I have every seen. We passed a sign for the “Psyche Pumping Station” along the way. I’m pretty sure there is nothing metaphysical involved, but we didn’t check it out.

We had dinner at the Mildura Brewery Pub, owned by guess who. The prawns were tasty, but even the darkest beer didn’t even come close to measuring up to beers at our own Lost Falls Brewery in Colville. The beer we’ve found that we like here is Toohey’s Old Black Ale and we get it at local Bottle Shops when we run low.

So that was our big day on the town. The next morning we headed out for the Grampians National Park.