Entry 33 – 27th 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.
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| 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.
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| 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!”
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We even got to view a buffalo farm from the boat.
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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.
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| Bill the farmer |
We spent a couple of days driving the left hand drive farm
vehicles around the paddocks rounding up sheep for sorting.
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| rounding up |
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| 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.
