Shepparton - ... from a Small City

Daily Photo: Where the Cows Used to Graze

I was staying with relatives in Shepparton for a few nights when someone suggested I take a walk around Victoria Park. I had no particular expectations, but a local recommendation is usually worth following, so I went to have an explore.

The area that would eventually become Victoria Park was once considerably less inviting. Before it was developed as a park, the land was used for grazing, including by local dairy farmers who would let their cows graze there between milkings. It was probably a perfectly sensible use of the land at the time, although it doesn’t immediately sound like the sort of place where you would go for a pleasant afternoon walk, unless you happened to be a cow.

The area was named Victoria Park after Queen Victoria in 1901, and at its centre was a body of water that was, to put it generously, more swamp than lake. By 1928, someone had decided that the swamp had probably done enough, and clearing work began to create a proper lake suitable for boating, swimming and general recreation.

As I walked around, it became obvious that Victoria Park had gradually accumulated the sort of things you expect to find in a well-used local park. Over the years a swimming pool, playground and skate park were added, while a wetlands area connecting towards the nearby Goulburn River became another feature. Today the park covers about 43 hectares, with nearly two kilometres of walking tracks winding through it.

What had once been an unsightly swamp and a place for cows to spend the hours between milkings had become a surprisingly pleasant part of Shepparton. There was the lake, established trees, open grassed areas, walking tracks and plenty of people making use of the park. It had the comfortable feel of a place that belongs to the locals rather than somewhere designed to impress visitors.

I walked around the lake, stopping occasionally when something caught my eye and taking photographs as I went. This is generally how I explore somewhere unfamiliar. I don’t particularly need an itinerary. Give me a walking track, a camera and somewhere I haven’t seen before, and I’m usually quite happy to see where it leads.

Victoria Park wasn’t somewhere I had planned to visit before arriving in Shepparton, and I probably wouldn’t have found it without that recommendation. But that’s one of the things I enjoy about travelling. The places that stay with you aren’t always the ones you’ve been told you must see. Sometimes they’re simply somewhere a local tells you to go for a walk.

Although, where people who live in town let their cows graze in between milking is quite beyond me.

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Continue the Journey...

Daily Photo – An Evening In Shepparton Regional Park

An early evening stroll led me deep into the heart of Shepparton Regional Park, a uniquely captivating Australian landscape. I found myself completely surrounded by the magnificent, sprawling floodplain forests of classic River Red Gums. As the fading daylight dipped below the horizon, a warm, golden sunset drifted softly through the dense canopy. The ancient trunks cast long shadows across the forest floor, framing the Australian twilight.

Standing here among the monotony of the trees, it is easy to see how a single step off the track could leave you utterly disoriented and lost. It was precisely this unforgiving, vast wilderness that colonial bushrangers relied upon, vanishing into the dense scrub to escape the law and evade the police for months on end.

What Australians historically term a ‘bushranger’ is really what the rest of us would call a common thief or outlaw. The most celebrated among them include figures like Ned Kelly, Harry Power, Daniel ‘Mad Dog’ Morgan, and Ben Hall, a collection of deeply anti-social fugitives wanted for an impressively long list of offences. They had a knack for vanishing into the unforgiving landscape, occasionally emerging to rob passing travellers, stagecoaches, and wealthy landowners before melting back into the scenery, sometimes not to be seen for months or even years. As far as hiding places went, Australia was so bafflingly immense that the opportunities for disappearing were almost endless, requiring a genuinely heroic level of commitment from the local constabulary to track the outlaws down. Modern Australians seem to love these characters as beloved folk icons, when in reality they were largely a collection of bullies and murderous thugs looking out for little more than their own gain.

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