Long Time, No Post

Ok, so my last blog post was about five weeks ago, (sorry about that). And that begs the questions, where have we been, and what have we been doing? There’s a lot to fit in but I’ll try to keep it brief.

We wanted to make the most of our last days in Barmera area, so I figured we should get out and explore the area a bit more. First on my list was Renmark, not much to see, but a nice little town. From there we continued east. The roads must be short in South Australia because before we knew it, we had crossed the border into Victoria.

Thanks to date and time stamps on my photos I can confirm that we crossed into to Vic 11:26am and back into SA 11:32am, it was a good trip.

Back in SA, I decided I wanted to check out the Murray River NP. I’d seen it online and I thought it would be nice to make that our first stop after leaving Barmera. We were fairly close so decided to do a bit of a recon before booking. Good job we did. The roads were rough and wet in places, the camp sites mediocre at best and only two out of the thirty or so campsites were actually open.

After that we’d had enough exploring for the day and headed back to Renmark hoping for some lunch, but it was after three when we got there and everything was closed. In desperation we went to KFC. Now, it’s been years since we’ve eaten that stuff and we never expect much of it, but this was soooo bad, I actually took it back and got a refund. From there we headed home (still hungry) via Berri then Lyrup where we sat and watched the little ferry come and go. We arrived back at Barmera just after five and called into a local restaurant where we dined on a delightful, traditional, Indian meal.

Two days later I had another bright idea – to find MacCabe Corner. This is where the borders of NSW, SA and Vic meet. Hold in mind that it has been a very wet season, with lots of flooding over the past months, and the fact that McCabe Corner is actually in the middle of the Murray River, you can imagine that this might not have been the best of ideas. But away we went. The roads were rough in places, wet in others and closed before we came to our destination, meaning we had to complete the trip by foot, eight kilometers of bush whacking.

We didn’t get to see McCabe Corner, our way was blocked by a channel, but we could imagine it, about two hundred meters, according to GPS, in front of Peter, just over the ridgeline in the middle of the unseen river.

We still had to kill a bit of time in SA, and decided to explore south-east from Barmera, trying to keep ahead of the rains which were still drenching most of SA. Fifty minutes or so out of Barmera, we came upon the tiny town of Paruna. There is nothing there except a little, basic caravan park where we stayed for $10 a night, with power and water! After twelve nights at Barmera, which offered neither of these, we stayed at Paruna for two nights.

After my last two navigational flops, Peter wouldn’t let me offer anymore destination suggestions. He followed his nose and we stopped at the Cypress Pines Wayside stop, once more in Vic. The plan was to stay there overnight and move on the next day. True to form we ended up staying there for five nights.

We had a lovely time, right up until the point we remembered we had recently bought five kilos of pumpkins in SA, and then realised that we wouldn’t be able to bring them, nor any of the other fresh produce we had, back into SA. The South Australians are very particular about protecting their agriculture? (and so they should be) but that meant before we crossed back over the border, I was going to have to do some cooking. We ate most of our produce while at Cypress Pines, as for the pumpkins, well, I do make a mean pumpkin and sweet spud soup.

The rain kept away most of the time, and there was firewood aplenty, so we had a fire going from nine-ish in the morning until we went inside for the night. It was wonderful, even Hugo bear-ed the cold.

From there we headed east as far as Ouyen, then south-west to Nhill, and back to SA, crossing at Bordertown, proud in the knowledge that we were bringing no fresh produce into the state, (even though we bought it from SA in the first place). We spent a night with our friends at Clayton Bay before heading back to St Kilda, Adelaide.

One of the many interesting things we’ve seen while travelling are the art Silos, but I don’t often post the images. These ones in Lascelles, were particularly well done and depicted a well respected local couple.

A BRIEF DIGRESSION-It was recently brought to my attention that I should put more detailed maps in my posts, (thanks for that JF). And it makes sense, here I am sprouting the names of places we've been, but with nothing to pin down the actual location within Australia. The map below isn't perfect, (if I make the map too large I can't fit the whole area in but the names are visible, if its too small you see the whole area, but not all names are visible) but it should give an idea of our last few weeks travel. 

That brings us to the second of July when I flew to Port Macquarie to spend a couple of weeks with my Mum, I was able to catch up with my brother and his fiancé, which was lovely. As for what Peter did during those two weeks…well, you’ll have to ask him about that, although I can tell you, he ate a lot of pumpkin soup while I was gone.

See you out there somewhere

On tow and on the go!