33 - Our final travelling days for 2016

Entry 33 – 27^th November 2016 

Another highlight of our Canberra visit was to view Tim & Penny’s first home which they purchased earlier during the year. We were pleased with their choice of design and the position of large windows as an added bonus in the cool Canberra climate, helping to nicely warm the house with the appearance of the morning sun. 

Tim took 4 days off of work to be with us and he did utilize Steve’s life experiences with two days allocated for house maintenance. Tim got to polish up on his drilling, riveting, screwing and tap reseating skills as well as obtaining some other advice for improvements around their home. 

Tim did reciprocate assisting with upgrades on our computer and providing us with some needed technical guidance. 

After 8 nights with Tim & Penny we started our journey towards home in Adelaide. Two days and about 300 kilometres later we stopped at West Wodonga to say hi to some other fellow travellers we met in 2015. Vivian and Leo showed us around some of their local attractions and the not too often full Hume Dam which has a storage area stretching 120 kilometres back from the dam wall. 

The below pictures show the height of Hume Dam the day of our visit and how low it was 8 months prior. The picture of the bridge we drove across Hume Dam and how low the water was previous to the record breaking rains during this year’s wet season.

Leo, Vivian & us

The rain arrived when we were at Wodonga and continued when it was time to move on. Due to another day of constant rain we drove a couple of hundred kilometres to Deniliquin NSW where we spent time with another great travelling couple we met in 2013, Mick and Jen. It was cold wet and windy when we arrived and Mick quickly got his fire roaring in his shed where we spent the evening chattering in the warmth of his “man” shed.

We were provided with a tour of some of their nearby highlights, naturally in the comfort of Mick’s ute with a large volume of areas inaccessible due to road closures from the wet conditions.

Deniliquin is famously known for its Ute musters.

Travelling away from the main highways we were seeing the effects from the excessive wet season the southern half of Australia had experienced. There were the hundreds of kilometres of road surfaces where the bitumen was breaking up caused by large volumes of water seeping into the road under surface. Many side roads were closed and large amounts of debris from flooding was very apparent. Farmers were still having difficulty accessing their land due to the wet conditions. Crops that had been looking to be in the best condition of all time were now starting to deteriorate due to the continuing wet.

Normally at this time of the year the country side would be drying out but there was still plenty of lush green grass lapping at the road sides.

We suspected it was going to take years for the many small communities and authorities to recover and re-establish the infrastructure to its previous status prior to the latest wet. 

Leaving Deniliquin we resumed our travels reverting to our preferred leisurely pace with many breaks stopping at points of interest for a look or walkabout. About a hundred kilometres down the road we stopped at a freedom camp location at a turf club in the township of Kerang. Kerang turned out to be a special location reiterating the appropriateness of etiquette and good behaviour, especially for ourselves. 

We had parked up and spent a bit over an hour walking around town admiring the views and buildings. We were feeling a bit on the weary side possibly from all our recent activities and socialising. The clouds were clearing from the sky and the sun was providing some welcomed warmth. Returning back to the caravan it felt nice and warm inside aiding with thoughts of an afternoon siesta. We were both nicely relaxed when the turf club volunteer caretaker showed up asking us to relocate, at the time for a reason that made no sense to us. It would have been so easy just to have ignored his calling out. Steve was very polite and chatted with him for a while, then we promptly moved about 50 metres to satisfy the request. About an hour later we were once again in siesta mode when our caretaker returned wanting to talk. He invited us out for a late afternoon boat cruise on his boat to view the sunset. We immediately accepted the wonderful invitation and promptly went back to sleep. That’s what you would think but no we only had an hour to prepare ourselves before Alan returned to guide us to the secluded location of his vessel, thus no further resting for us. 

At 5 pm we travelled to Alan’s boat or as he called it, (barge) where the three of us cruised along the Gunbower Creek viewing the magnificent scenery for a while before returning to his mooring where we were joined by his partner, Karen and her mother Doti. We then travelled up the creek till sunset returning to our vehicle some 3 hours later. They even tried to share their tea (pork and gravy rolls with us). It was a glorious experience in a beautiful setting and we thoroughly enjoyed their company. Moral of this story, “It always pays to be polite!”

We even got to view a buffalo farm from the boat.

A couple of nights later we camped in a beautiful bush setting at Bailey Rocks, which was a welcomed change from viewing crop and stock paddocks we had been travelling through over the last few weeks along our route. This location reiterated just how delightful walking through the bush could be with the sound of bird chatter in the back ground, kangaroos jumping out around you, wonderful looking trees all aiding to a peaceful sense of personal well-being.

From Deniliquin we spent three days travelling at a leisurely pace journeying around 350 kilometres to our next destination, Mary’s sister’s farm near Naracoorte South Australia. 

Of note the paddocks along our route were awash with hay reiterating how rewarding a good wet season it had been for the farmers.

We spent six enjoyable days at the Naracoorte farm socialising and assisting with farm life duties. The below picture showing a pleasurable night out for tea, with (Cindy) the owner of Cindy’s café photo bombing our picture of our night out.

Bill the farmer

We spent a couple of days driving the left hand drive farm vehicles around the paddocks rounding up sheep for sorting.

rounding up

6 month old lambs kept safe in the shearing shed prior loading for market.

We spent another couple of days travelling a couple of hundred kilometres with our next destination at Mary’s home farm now run by her brothers where we caught up with the boys and Mary’s mum. 

It wasn’t long before they duly informed us how great it was to see us and could we assist with the harvest driving the chaser field bin following the harvester around and other duties pertaining with the harvest. 

We weren’t expecting a greeting of this nature especially considering harvest was all done and dusted at this time last year and they hadn’t previously requested assistance from us during harvest. For us it was a family request we could assist with. 

So our 2016 travels have suddenly come to an abrupt end. It seemed there was a high probability we may be spending the best part of the next couple of months devoted to farming duties.

A 2016 summary & costings will be added once completed.