Thursday marked the halfway point for the Olympic Torch Relay, with 50 days to go until the Flame arrives at Homebush.
The highlight of the day was Australia’s oldest living man, 109-year-old Jack Lockett, carrying the Torch through a 15 000 strong, emotional crowd cheering him on as he lit the cauldron at the lunchtime celebration in Bendigo.
Jack is a much-loved member of the Bendigo community, he has lived through three centuries and fought in the first world war. He has 15 grandchildren and 23 great grand children and resides in good health at Bendigo Health Care Group’s Careshalton House.
Preceding Jack’s touching leg of the relay, was a huge multicultural procession, where Sun Loong, the longest Imperial Dragon in the Southern Hemisphere, appeared to thrill the huge crowd. Sun Loong, which stretches 62 metres long and requires 37 people to carry it at any one time, is on display at the city’s Golden Dragon Museum.
Bendigo is well known for it’s Chinese heritage and tradition. Located in central Victoria, it is a major commercial centre with pastoral and manufacturing industries. The Bendigo Art Gallery houses a major collection of Australian Art.
Maroopna, a fruit growing region which contains many protected reserves was visited earlier in the day, as well as Tatura, a town in the Gouldburn Valley which has rich and fertile land due to the extensive irrigation projects in the region. The relay also passed through the once prosperous gold mining town of Rushworth.
The gold in Rushworth was discovered in 1853 by local Aboriginals who led diggers to the ‘pretty stones’, and the town is thought to be named after the gold ‘rush being worth while’. The town contains the Rushworth State Forest which boasts a number of indigenous trees including red ironbark and yellow gum and fauna including kangaroos, wallaroos, possums, wallabies as well as hundreds of species of birds.
The torch then travelled through the rural farming town of Colbinabbin – an aboriginal name meaning ‘dingo caught in a trap’- and onwards to Huntly, a very multicultural area during the gold rush, with French, Italian, Swiss, Spanish and Chinese people settling in the area and producing vineyards and gardens.
The last town visited on Day 50, and where the evening celebration took place was Maryborough, which Mark Twain once described as being ‘a railway with a town attached’, which was more a remark about the magnificence of the 25-room station than a derogatory comment about the town. The station, a red brick structure which was erected in 1890, is now a tourist complex which contains an information centre, an antique emporium, galleries and restaurants.
The evening celebration was hosted by the Central Goldfields Shire Council and included a range of local entertainment such as the Victorian Police Show Band.
Source: SOCOG Olympics.com