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.
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| look at Pippa’s plate of food |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
