We said 'Goodbye' to Canberra this morning and we are now heading 'West'.  As we have been told by other more seasoned caravaners than us......once you head 'West' there is a longing for home!  And we are starting to feel that way!

Today we travelled to Wagga Wagga via Gundagai.  If you are travelling west from Canberra you just have to visit that 'Dog on the Tuckerbox'.  Not that the monument is anything very spectacular, but we were there with 'every other man and his dog', as it is a long weekend in NSW today and school holidays.

Firstly though, before leaving Canberra we took on board 'Ronda's Tourist Tip' and visited the 'Tulip Top Gardens'.  Thank you Ronda for making the comment on my blog.  When I mentioned to Peter about your comment, his response was "Yes!  I overheard a guy telling John, that he had visited Tulip Top Gardens and enjoyed them more that the display beside Lake Burley Griffin".  Men....Why didn't they say anything to us?  If it had been something to do with agriculture we would have known about it!  Anyway the guys were happy to go along with the suggestion, we could visit 'Tulip Top Gardens' as we left Canberra today.  Thank goodness we left the Epic Campground at 9.00am, we only had 14 kms to go and they opened at 9.00am.  If we had been any later Peter would not have stopped!  There were so many people there.  Two tourist buses were already parked and another was right behind us.  But the young fella directing traffic put us in a good spot and we had no trouble getting out, when we left around 11.00am.  The gardens were just beautiful and Dorothy and I both said to each other "This is a real garden"!

The story of 'Tulip Top Gardens' is one of those stories you warm to.  The Rhodin's are a family passionate and dedicated  to creating this patch of paradise for one month of the year, each year.  Bill and Pat purchased the property in 1993, with the view of developing it into a tourist park.  The whole area was burnt off enabling them to plant the trees.  In 1997 the Rhodins opened Stage One of the gardens to the public. These are the upper gardens.  In 1999 Stage Two was opened and this is Waterfall Valley.

Over half a million bulbs and flowers are planted by hand each year.  The garden covers an area of 10 acres and is set in a hollow.  There is a Lookout over the garden.  It is a workout to get up to it!  You could only see a small patch of orange tulips, but it does put the garden in the 'hidden valley' into perspective and provides a very nice view of the surrounding hills.  There are 1,000 trees and the majority were full of blossom.  There is a cascading waterfall and watercourse through the garden.  There were speakers positioned up in the trees throughout the garden and soft music was being played through them.  We agreed with the words of the brochure 'Tulip Top Gardens is a most unique, tranquil piece of paradise'.  The entry fee was $17.00 for Seniors and free tea and coffee was available all day, but there was a 'Coffee Van' if you wanted to purchase the real deal.  Pat, Bill and their son are the only gardeners and their daughter does the administration and marketing.

Work starts of preparing next year's show as soon as this year's show finishes.  The bulbs are lifted in the first week of November and placed in named crates.  There is also about two weeks of pruning to be done to many of the blossom trees.  Things slow down over Christmas and then pick up again at the end of February.  Then the garden beds are reshaped and prepared, adding fertiliser and making sure the pH is right.  They also start checking the bulb catalogues.  They trial 10 or 12 new bulbs with desirable characteristics each year, in their search for magic colours.

The seedling trays of annuals arrive in the middle of March and they are a lot of work., but Bill says the garden would be nothing without them.  There is a six week window to get the tulips in the ground from mid May until the end of June. They cannot start planting until the soil thaws in the morning,  Sometimes they work in the dark to make the deadline.  They plant early, mid and late varieties.  Then everything is covered with sugar cane mulch, which offers protection against the birds and frost.  It also saves on the watering and keeps the weeds down.

Pat says "World Favourite is a really good performing tulip for the family.  It's an orangey-red with a touch of yellow at the base that looks like it has a light burning inside it".  They plant a few thousand of this variety.  But for the visitors, the one that thrills is the black tulip, 'Queen of the Night'.  There is a lot of romance about black tulips. 

"Bill says "The reward for us is the look on people's faces when they come across the bridge and are suddenly faced with this great expanse of blossoms, tulips and annuals.  Watching them makes it all worthwhile"!  

We had morning tea at the Gardens and left around eleven, planning to get to Gundagai for lunch.  Which we did, but we were surprised to find so many people at this roadside stop enjoying the beautiful day.  The 'Dog on the Tuckerbox' is a 'Pioneer Monument'.  It is a tribute to the pioneers of the district and it was unveiled on the 28th November 1932, by the Right Honourable J.A. Lyons P.C Prime Minister of the Commonwealth.

The actual story of the 'Dog on the Tuckerbox' goes something like this.....There was a teamster in the area by the name of 'Bill the Bullocky' and he was on the road to Gundagai in the 1850's with his dog.  While leading his bullock team and wagon across a creek five or nine miles from Gundagai, Bill's wagon became hopelessly bogged in the creek.  Trying to drag the wagon out of the bog, one of his bullocks then broke the wagon's yoke.  Bill gave up on the job and went to have his lunch, but to top off his bad luck, found his dog sitting - or worse- on his tuckerbox!  The other bullockies thought the incident a great joke and one of them supposedly wrote a poem about it.  In several versions, the poem spread the story of Bill's bad luck far and wide.

Onward then to Wagga Wagga arriving about 3.00pm to the Big 4 Caravan Park on the Sturt Highway a few kilometres from the town centre.  The caravan park is on the bank of the Murrumbidgee River.