Donna and I went up to Welshmans Reef near Maldon in the goldfields area of central Victoria to visit some friends who’d moved up there a few months ago. They’ve got a lovely old miners cottage which they’ve been working hard on doing up (we were their first visitors) and Donna and I had a great time up there. Being so far away from any sizeable city means there is very little light pollution and so we were treated to a wonderful view of the Milky Way with the various dark nebula being easy to see, especially the Coalsack. I also saw, for the first time, both the Large and Small Megellanic Clouds. No astrophotography I’m afraid as I’d forgotten my Nikon and so only had my Nokia N900 with me!

We took a couple of trips in to Maldon and saw the sunset from the old poppet lookout tower on Mount Tarrangower on Sunday night:

plus their Easter Parade on the Monday afternoon which had some great vintage vehicles and Ned Kelly on a Harley Davidson, but we couldn’t hang around for the raw egg throwing/catching competition. 😉

Instead we took a trip over to Porcupine Flat nearby to see the bucket dredge and dragline crane that were there:

So a great time away and nice to have a chance to stop and smell the flowers somewhere nice and quiet.