The Long and Winding Ride: Epilogue

The Long and Winding Ride

 

 

Epilogue

 

“The long and winding road 

That leads to your door 

Will never disappear 

I’ve seen that road before

It always leads me here 

Lead me to your door”

 

(from The Long and Winding Road by The Beatles) 

 

I hope the series has led you to that ‘door’. Whether that door was a cellar door, a change room door, a pub door, a cafe door or a farm gate, we knocked on plenty during our long and winding ride. 

 

My favourite stops will have shone through … a Milawa vineyard … a Beechworth pub … an Oxley cafe … a tranquil village in a peaceful valley … a footy ground in tobacco and hops country … a winery in the lee of the Warby’s … and more. 

 

Inside those doors and out on the trails we have become acquainted with pioneering winemakers,  legendary footballers, Italian prisoners of war, Chinese fortune seekers, bushrangers, gold miners, hop growers and tobacco farmers, cattlemen, cheese makers, horsemen, road builders, artists, heroic World War II nurses, and bushfire fighters, among many others. They all have a treasured place in the rich tapestry of the Ovens and King valleys.

 

What did we learn along the way? From the Bogong High Plains to the Ovens gold fields and to the lush King Valley there is diversity, but equally there is harmony and a shared history. And to some extent the football clubs and leagues in the region have contributed to its sense of place and community.

 

Standout stages aren’t hard for me to select. To have traced the footsteps of my pioneering great uncles at Mount Buffalo was my best experience. The peaceful downhill cycle on the Murray to Mountains Rail Trail from Beechworth to Everton was also a delight. 

 

If I was asked to pick an image that best depicts Ovens and King country it would be of a tobacco kiln standing amid vines with blue-green hills in the background.

 

 

Those who joined the tour have made observations and shared their experiences. Let’s recount some of them.

 

The imperative to never forget the impact of white settlement on the First Peoples of the valleys was reinforced in episode 1. 

 

We heard an outline of a chance meeting at Bright with a Brownlow Medal contender from Essendon who was shedding stuff from his shelves for a garage sale. There is more to follow on that encounter I hope. 

 

An appetising suggestion of a Friday lunch in the Ovens and King was welcomed. Smokie  recommended a hotel high up in the King Valley. 

 

A meteorologist from Melbourne recounted his successful search for a flood gauge on the King River during a big rain event a few years ago. 

 

Our unofficial Kelly Gang historian, Glen!, added to the narrative from his readings on the bushrangers and posed questions about their last days which we may never have an answer to. Ned Kelly may or may not have played footy, but there are established connections between the bushranger and the game, including a few of its greats. Glen also shared some of his experiences of living in the north east, and as always, footballers he recalls.

 

The ‘Riverina/Rochester Rocket’ chimed in with his recollections of footballers from the Ovens and King and told of the observations he made attending matches at Bright and Myrtleford this season. Like others, he posed football history questions which kept the narrator on his toes.

 

Others reminisced about their experiences cycling, motorbike riding and driving along the roads of the Ovens and King, while dreaming of return visits to buy cheese, taste wine and watch footy.

 

 

Many of our lunchtime spreads have been much more than refuelling stops. For mine the smoked trout at Smoko, the yabby roll beside the lower Ovens River and the many Italian feasts linger in the memory. The matching brews and wines have done justice to the region’s best. For my palate, the Shiraz, Mondeuse and Cabernet just pipped the Durif. What was your favourite food and wine stop?

 

 

In the football sphere of our tour we have moved from friendly games of football between gold mining settlements, to the formation of the first football associations, and on to the modern day football league that dominates the region. A couple of clubs in the Ovens and King Football Netball League missed us as we flew by – Benalla All Blacks and Bonnie Doon – because they were either off our path or just too distant. 

 

We paid visits to a long list of former football clubs and football grounds, many lost in the mists of time, but alarmingly, some ripped away in the last ten years.  Where there was once a collection of more than 50 football clubs within the territory of our tour route, now there are barely 20.

 

Stories that filled our hearts and minds were of: the ‘fifth quarter’ at Tarrawingee in the 1954 grand final; the tragic loss of Wodonga football men returning from a match at Wangaratta in 1949; a family dynasty of footballers from Chiltern; a man, later called ‘God’, who electrified Myrtleford in 1983; a big-hearted gentle giant who was idolised at Arden Street; a Bulldog and Bomber from Milawa as rough and tough as blue metal; the son of an Italian migrant family who slammed on the footy field and has become a national media personality; many father figures of football in the north east; and a contemporary Collingwood footballer who is surely the epitome of the energiser battery in those old TV commercials.

 

 

And finally, we found our El Dorado – the place and the legend. 

 

 

More from Peter Clark can be read Here.

 

 

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