Sunday, 15 September 2019

Chapter 196: Victoria: Butchert Gardens: Words


Victoria

We do an evening tour of the Butterfly house and the Butchert gardens. Our guide entertains us with some amusing and colorful stories.

The butterfly house contains butterflies, birds, animals and fish. Mainly tropical and sub-tropical.
We arrive at the Butchert gardens in the dark. Lights illuminate the paths. Our guide gives us a map and tells us to back at the bus at a certain time. We then decide to get lost. As we wander up and down the paths we continuing bump into our group. They all get in first and ask us which way to go.
After a while we give up peering at the stunning gardens and concentrate on being back in the bus on time.

Back on the bus the guide entertains us again with a story about the founders of this garden. They were in Europe booked on a return boat trip. They received a wire telling them an eagle had killed their European finches. They made a detour to Germany to get some more European finches and missed their boat back to North America. The boat was called the Titanic. When they eventually returned to Victoria they devoted themselves to building these incredible gardens.
These stunning gardens owe their existence to two people missing a boat.


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