9 Feb: The Best Bakery in the World - Peterborough to Camperdown

- February 16, 2023

We stopped by Massacre Bay on our way out of Peterborough and via the Bay of Islands and the Bay of Martyrs. Massacre Bay lies just outside Peterborough, the name being one of many references to massacres around Australia's landscape. There are no written records regarding the origin of the name, but oral history describes a brutal hunting party that drove the male members of the Karrae-Wurrong people off the cliffs of the bay before equally brutally hunting down the women and children in the swampland along the Curdies River. All that was left was the name and a few references in oral whispers from the past.

Just as beautiful as the more well-known stretches of coastline.

At the Paaratte Nature Reserve, where brand new facilities had been installed for the proposed extension of the rail trail, we stopped for our morning coffee ritual. While we were peacefully drinking our cuppa along came a man who was obviously showing off the facilities to persons who had an influence on future funding of things like rail trail extensions. He was very excited to see us there with our Qld number plates and bikes on the car, looking for all the world like we had arrived just to make use of the brand new shelter shed and bicycle tools. He even took a photo of us, and now we are immortalised in someone's funding application in rural Victoria for ever more.

Using a brand new picnic table.

We stopped to look at the Timboon trestle bridge. No one took a photo of us.

Roger was on a mission that morning. Back in early 2019 when we visited the BD in Warrnambool he had sought repast at the Camperdown Bakery. He'd raved about it ever since, declaring it the best bakery in the world, if not the universe. I'd been a tad sceptical about this claim based on the soggy offering he brought home for me in 2019, but was willing to concede that 2 hours in the car may have tarnished its credentials somewhat and I really needed to try the whole Camperdown Bakery experience myself.

So we did.

I'm still not convinced that it's the best in the world, but it was definitely the biggest vanilla slice in the world. So big, in fact, as to be difficult for even a vanilla slice aficionado like myself to finish.

Camperdown had a fine collection of old buildings lining the generously proportioned main street. We wandered up and down the street to look at them and to walk off our Bakery experience.

This looked like a wide median strip but it wasn't. The main street was really two main streets, one either side of this, both with two-way traffic. Very confusing.

Obligatory selfie with clock growing out of head.

We checked into the Lakes and Craters Holiday Park which occupied a lofty position in the edge of town snuggled up to the Botanic Gardens and overlooking two crater lakes.

Check in views.

The Botanic Gardens boasted a plinth that once held a statue of Robert Burns, the Scottish Poet. Apparently the statue was commissioned by Roberts Best Friend and when Best Friend died he generously bequeathed the statue to his son who possibly was not particularly thrilled to inherit a 2-ton statue of Dads Best Mate, and promptly up and emigrated to Australia. Guilt must have pursued him however, because at some stage later he paid a not inconsequential sum to bring the statue out and put it in the Camperdown Botanic Garden. There it stayed deteriorating quietly with the equal attention of vandals and time, until it was discovered, deemed to of value, and taken away to be restored. Which is why the Camperdown Botanic Gardens proudly displays an empty plinth and we got to enjoy a story of several generations of follies.

Botanic Garden views.

A man flew his remote controlled glider over Lake Bullen Merri. He stopped when a bird of prey attacked his glider. Apparently in arguments between remote controlled gliders and birds of prey, the birds always win.

All of this just invited sunset viewing, so view the sunset we did.