Where are we?? NSW/Victoria/NSW???

Sunday 11/09/09

As predicted this did turn out to be a slack day – Pat laid on the bed most of the day watching Bathurst & I cleaned up the van & then went & did some shopping (food).

Monday 12/09/09

I went off for another half hour walk & Pat went around to a caravan repair place to ask some questions on our water heater. It hadn’t been working on power for about a month!! Works on gas fine. Turns out that if Joyce hadn’t knocked the power plug out of its socket (it is in where she puts her shoes) than it would work!!

We have decided to try and free camp for the next few nights so out with the Camps Australia book to see what is available. Wentworth is 265 kms away & we will get there tomorrow. Well there were 3 camp sites mentioned in the book but they weren’t to be found. We did find 2 others that weren’t listed so maybe this Shire has had an upgrade of sites. Anyway we found a small area that was about 25kms short of Wentworth. Okay spot.

Tuesday 13/09/09

Another quarantine spot just before Wentworth. Only things to be disposed of here are fruit, capsicum & tomatoes. Thankfully I had left doing a veg shop so didn’t have too much to throw out. Will have to keep a check of where we are headed so I make sure that I don’t buy stuff that has to be thrown out – there are a few quarantine areas to go through.

Into Wentworth & another helpful person at the information centre here. Wentworth is a historic town on the junction of the Darling & Murray Rivers. In its heyday it was a busy river port with paddleboats carrying supplies to the stations on the Darling River and returning with the wool crops. We went to Fotherby Park where we did a tour over the PS Ruby. (PS standing for paddle steamer.) This boat was built in 1907 & has been restored due to the hard work of a restoration committee. Now that it has been restored the boat is being used for private functions, cruises, etc.

Wentworth gives fame to the "Grey Tractor" (a Ferguson) that helped save the town from flooding in 1956 when the Darling & Murray Rivers threatened to wash the town away.

We then went and had a look at the Lock No 10/weir & then continued out to find a camp spot on the river. According to the information centre you are able to camp most spots along the Murray River. We found a lovely spot & set up home. I went off for another walk along the river (I’ll get fit yet) & Pat decided to throw the line out. No fish biting but I enjoyed the walk.

The weather is not the greatest – still very windy & quite cool with some rain forecast. Anyway at around 4.30am the rain started and was quite heavy. As the road out from where we were camped would turn quite slippery if it got too wet Pat made the decision to move the van. Henceforth there we were packing up the van to move closer to the bitumen road in case the rain continued. As it turned out we didn’t get too much rain & would have been okay where we were. We weren’t the only ones to move though, another motor home moved & parked near us!!

Wednesday 14/09/09

We continued on to Mildura today. It is only 30 minutes away. Another camp spot along the river. We are going to stay at Merbein Common. Once again some good walking tracks so I will take myself off for a walk later today.

A drive to the local visitors centre so that we could find out what to visit here. Mildura has a population of 60,000. The region is called the “Sunraysia Region”. Mildura is on the Victorian border so we have been crossing from NSW to Victoria & back again a number of times today.

This area is on a Stage 3 Water Restrictions. Hard to imagine having water restrictions with all that water from the Murray River flowing just about past their doors.

Statistics given for the Mildura region for percentage of fresh produce grown in Australia is:

95% dried vine fruit

69% table grapes

55% almonds

41% pistachios

33% olive

24% carrots

23% asparagus

21% citrus

20% wine grape

There seems to be quite a lot to see around here so we think we will book into a caravan park tomorrow and stay a few days. The Mildura Sun (?) Festival is on for the next few days – don’t think we will be bothered going to that.

Wish the weather would improve though.

Thursday 15/09/09

We have booked into a caravan park right on the banks of the Murray River but across the river from Mildura in a place called Buronga. So we are back in NSW.

Today we took a drive out to Redcliff to see the “Big Lizzie”. The Big Lizzie is a 45 ton tractor with 2 wagons (after restoration it now has only 1 trailer) which was moved to Red Cliff in 1920 to commence the extremely slow work of clearing the dense and vast mailee scrub for this important Government Soldier Settlement Scheme. Her average speed for land clearing was 1 mile per hour and the carrying capacity was 10 tons. Neither of us had ever seen anything like this tractor.

Friday 16/09/09

Off to do a tour of the Big Orange this morning. Quite an interesting tour. We came away with a unique invention of an orange peeler – Pat has tried it and it works a treat. We also came away with oranges, mandarins & orange blossom honey!!

We thought about doing the paddle steam tour but as the weather isn’t the nicest for being on the water we think we will leave that till further down the river. Another thing that we want to do is hire a houseboat for a few days but again this will have to wait till the weather is nicer. Anyone want to join us???

Saturday 17/09/09

The weather is a bit warmer today (not as warm as the weather predicted for Perth). Today will be a bit of getting the van back to being organized (ie sheet/towel washing, floor washing, etc) as we plan to move on tomorrow.

Before doing all that we have had another drive around Mildura & then low & behold Pat & I took the bowls with us & went to the Mildura Bowling Club for a roll up. It was great to have a roll up on such great greens. The grass is fine couch grass. It was probably running at 15. For those of you who might have visited Mildura, the Mildura Bowling Club had 4 greens but has now been split to 2 greens for Mildura BC & 2 greens for the Mildura Workers Club. We were asked if we would like to stay for social bowls but declined the offer.

From here we went to have a look at Lock No 11 & the weir. We were fortunate enough to get there just as a paddle steamer “Rothbury” was going through the lock procedure. Very interesting to watch.

Tomorrow we will head off on the road. We have made the decision not to follow the Murray River along at the moment as the weather isn’t as nice as we had hoped. The plan now is to head towards Horsham & then eventually to Mt Gambier before then heading along the Victorian coastline for a bit before then heading back towards the Murray River region.

Oct 17, 2009

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