Week 3 – Bega (I’ve lost track of the days)
We had a pretty lazy day today, to the extent that we slept in until after 9.30am. When we did finally get up we stoked up the fire and had a quiet morning inside watching tv and snuggled up on the couch.
After lunch we decided that we should venture outside and take a look at what is the metropolis of Bega. We did the obligatory tour of the Bega cheese factory and checked out the Cheese factory museum. It was actually pretty interesting seeing the old and what would have been very laborious equipment that they used early last century. There is a public viewing area in the factory itself where you can watch some of the workings. The area that we watched was where 20kg blocks of cheese come out of processing and are vacuum wrapped for export. There were some very interesting stats quoted in the factory, like they use more than 1.1 million litres of milk per annum, export 6000 tons of cheese per annum, employ more than 400 people directly in the factory. The Bega Cheese Factory sources all of its milk from the local suppliers with whom they have ongoing supply contracts.
Below are some photo’s of Enid and Lion that we took at the Bega Cheese Factory. You will note the cow in some of the photos is a bit strange. Water is pumped into the udders and you can sit on the bench and milk the cow. Lion thought this was too much hard work and just laid underneath sucking up anything that dripped out.
After the Cheese Factory, Enid caught up with an old school friend while I wondered around and checked out the town. That took about 15 minutes (up one side of the main street and down the other), so I then bought a magazine, found a cafe and had a juice.
We had a very nice roast dinner with Enid’s mum and dad (roast lamb etc. yummm !) in the evening and then headed back to the cabin. Luckily we headed back early because at around 8.30pm the heavens opened up and it literally bucketed down for hours. The rain was so heavy and created such a noise that we had to turn the tv volume level up to 40 to hear. We apparently got more than 55mm of rain overnight; again, we consider ourselves the drought busters, as this is another example of every place that we have visited so far receiving heaps of rain.
Cheers
D&E