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Today at Dots we went into Castlemaine and the surrounding area. The community are holding an open garden week so we went to a few of the properties on the way round. In the morning we looked around Castlemaine information centre and what was going on in the local community. We stopped by a garden that had been designed and landscaped by someone famous in Australia. The house the garden sat in use to be head honchos place around the time of the gold rush. Dot then took us to Redhill. A site of former gold mining. Very interesting. They started just with getting it from the rivers and from pits before blasting the solid earth with water cannons aimed at cliff edges. We drove up to a memorial in Castlemaine that celebrated a guy who'd travelled from south to north Australia and unfortunately didn't make the journey back. She then took us to a spot in the old goldfields which was the site of an old childrens graveyard. This is where mum saw her first Roos. Went back to Dots for a spot of lunch and then Dot asked me to drive to the next two gardens, so she could direct. My first time driving a manual car hot a very long time. Went ok and didn't crunch any gears, just had a bit of a problem reversing up a steep embankment with a ditch on the other side. The first garden was one that the owners had built their own Eco friendly house and then planted up. The photos are on my camera. They'd put a small lake in and terraced the plot they had. I think it was called Luxouri. They'd tried to create a little bit of Greece in their garden, as well as the design of the house. The last place we went to just blew us away. The couple had bought the place 8 years ago and completely renovated the house and gardens. It was breath taking. They said they had 20 acres and are currently looking at moving and down sizing. After a long time there we headed back home and dot made us a cold tea which we ate with the bottle of Jacobs Creek that we bought on the wine tour. We had a good night chatting and talking about old times etc.
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