Cheap flights to Mildura take just 40 minutes from Melbourne. Lots of visitors - bound for the orchards and vineyards on working holidays - will arrive by coach, train and car too. Once they arrive, they'll discover that, like many of the street names in Broken Hill, that honour its roots as a mining town, several streets in Mildura are named after the fruits that are grown here. Orange, Lemon, Lime, Cherry and Olive are just a few of them.
This part of northwestern Victoria (and southwestern New South Wales) is known as Sunrayasia. The region produces 80 per cent of the country's dried fruit and 85 per cent of Victoria's wine-making grapes, not to mention a fair chunk of Australia's citrus fruit harvest.
As Mildura Tourism says: "It starts with the river." George and William Chaffey, Canadian brothers, founded an irrigation settlement along the banks of the Murray River in the 1880s. When soldier settlers and migrants from Ireland, England, Greece, Italy and the former Yugoslavia arrived, they brought with them the cultivation skills that helped to make Mildura the food bowl of Victoria.
The gourmet trail around Mildura is a delicious one. There are fine restaurants and wineries. Mildura also has a thriving arts scene. The mighty Murray River might just be the city's greatest asset - for gazing at, fishing in or sailing along in a houseboat.