21 - Canberra to Adelaide 5/11 - 21/11/2019 - Avoiding Fires

Entry 21           Canberra to Adelaide 5/11 – 21/11/2019 – Avoiding Catastrophic Fires.

As always it was a pleasure to stay at our son’s Canberra home with his family. There were plenty of chat’s and play time together. This visit panned out for a period of 8 nights.

We were kept busy attending to Tim’s “wish list.”

One of his items was to install a new roller blind in the dining room window. Steve came up with a bold plan to utilize the packaging, where Pippa enjoyed time learning some coordination skills emptying her pool of balls into the packaging container.

We enjoyed many different types of meals with Pippa a keen food lover.

look at Pippa’s plate of food

this is what was left of her plate and she cleaned it up after the photo

Pippa enjoyed her early Christmas present from her grandparents.

It had been a busy week, with Tim’s assistance providing a wish list of jobs so Steve wouldn’t get bored and we thoroughly enjoyed our Pippa time.

jobs all done with gear on floor relocated

We were packed ready to leave in the morning. During the evening, we checked the day’s news to discover the New South Wales government had declared a state of emergency for all of N.S.W. for the next seven days with many areas of the state declared to be a catastrophic fire danger area. The transport department was warning people to avoid any non-essential travel on roads.

This was a first experience for us, never-before having to consider the declaration of a state of emergency with the following days dangerous fire conditions, declared to be catastrophic state-wide, primarily due to changing weather conditions predicted for that day.

All of N.S.W. national parks were also closed during this period. Our planned route over the next couple of weeks had been via some N.S.W. national parks.

We assessed it would be best to stay put in Canberra for the time being, deciding to monitor till the present dangerous fire conditions decreased.

We had been aware of more than 150 properties destroyed by fires a bit north of us and of three people deceased due to fires a couple of days prior. During the following day, we monitored the rural fire service web site and other media outlets watching how the day had panned out. Fires did destroy many more homes with additional people sustaining injuries.

We assessed areas of the state to avoid, including locations unaffected by fires during the day, selecting what we thought to be a safe route of sorts to continue our journey towards home. (5 days later the tally of houses destroyed by fires was almost at 500 with four deaths for the beginning of the fire season and summer was yet to start.)

It would have been simple to head directly home which would be 2-3 days drive away. We were at a stage in life where we needed to take advantage of opportunities, enjoying life travelling with a caravan exploring Australia.

our final picture with Pippa

Plan B. With a risk assessment for another planned route appearing to be safe we were ok to depart the following day. We made a phone call and were organised for a farm stay, of sorts. Two days later, about 530 kilometres down the road we stopped at fellow travellers - Anne and Brian’s hobby farm whom we met 2015.

a great overnight stop at Lake Hume

We thoroughly enjoyed our time at their place, Steve spent a morning with Brian at the men’s shed, Mary enjoyed some baking with Anne in their large kitchen. We all spent an afternoon out with brunch at Ruffy’s Produce Pantry and some great views from Mt Wombat.

After four enjoyable nights at Anne and Brian’s it was time to continue heading home.

We had studied a few different route options for our trip home. The long-range weather forecast was for one day with temperatures above 40 C state wide across Victoria and South Australia. With consideration of dangers posed by high temperatures, in the end dictated our travel route. There was the consideration for our comfort, consideration for our tow tugs health with a preference for minimal driving during the excessive period of heat, a location to chill out with minimal risk of exposure if a bush fire occurred nearby and where might there be a nice location to sit out a day or so during the hot spell. We decided on a near direct route towards home, aiming for Narrung camp ground located on the banks of the Coorong Lakes.

For us we thought our planned period for driving was a bit on the optimistic side, aiming to complete around 650 kilometres in a couple of days. With this in mind, day one we each had two sessions of driving with some leg stretching between change overs and a siesta in the middle, or as Brian informed us a ‘scan,’ senior citizen afternoon nap. By the days end we had travelled 350 kilometres.

We spent a quiet night at the town of Nhill away from the highway camped at the aviation museum. There was a walking trail with plenty of signage explaining our surrounds of the Nhill world war two air base, a great way to stretch out our weary body after a long day’s drive.

Air craft hanger built 1941for air base

The following day we were back in our home state of South Australia since departing in March, eight months prior. We set camp at a beautiful setting located on the Coorong lakes, a free camp about 1 ½ hours’ drive from home. We just weren’t ready for home yet.

It's always nice to see the bird life close by though they do leave their mark.

We watched a boat come in from the lake, docking at the little jetty with a crew of three, staying overnight. And we enjoyed another beautiful sunset. The boat moved on early morning and the birds resumed their place on the jetty.

Orange spot marks our caravan

Narrung as always was a great location to chill out for a while.

There was a state wide total fire ban for the forecast hot day with a prediction of a temperature reaching 43C at Narrung. It was a windy day and we kept cool utilizing the caravans shade with a couple of cooling dips in Lake Alexandrina with its shoreline a few metres from us. As the day transpired there were 45 bush fires reported for the day in South Australia with several homes destroyed. Gratefully we were safe at Narrung.

We were nicely relaxed feeling quite comfortable for our final drive home, with the completion of our 2019 travels.