1. - Travel Time - River Murray in South Australia 3rd March to 11th March 2021

 

Edition 1 - 2021.

We happily continue with Mary and Stephen’s travel journal during their retirement years, loving our time together.

With the commencement of 2021, we in Australia like the rest of the world were experiencing the ongoing cancellation of many annual events continuing on from the horrid year of 2020.

The world was still in shut down due to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic. Australian states were regularly introducing border closures, often with only a few hour’s notification along with the sudden imposed restrictions. We like many others were suffering from, “shell shock syndrome,” with borders being reopened accompanied by publicity campaigns for people to come and visit interstate locations to boost the various tourist destinations and then suddenly have those destinations declared off limits again and again and again.

We were keeping busy at our home base and eventually the need of a well-being boost provided by our regular travel time took priority.

Excitedly, we commenced our 2021 travels on the 3^rd March 2021 with a bit of our pre-3^rd March activities recorded for our future knowledge.

 

Entry 1

24^th December 2020 and Mary, was officially another year older with a birthday pizza meal with our youngest son and his family at Port Willunga beach.

2020 Christmas day was at Stephen’s brother home with Stephen’s sisters and parents. It was a quiet Christmas without our grandchildren about as it was the alternate year where they spent Christmas with their spouse’s family.

We concentrated on caravan and house maintenance requirements. It was a busy period with quite an amount of additional needs to attend to from our normal yearly requirements.

Mid 2020 Stephen’s parents decided it was time for them to stop driving and had sold their car. Stephen’s sisters were attending to all their needs. When we returned from our 2020 travels, we took on both his sisters rolls, providing them with some respite as they were both working full time.

It was a busy and enlightening period. We ferried them around for shopping, medical and other needs. We spent a lot of time discussing and documenting their end of life wishes, what type of funeral, etc, etc. This included creating a concise record of all their personal particulars, utility accounts, government accounts, etc, etc.

We re-read our own wills, assessing them to still be appropriate and just hadn’t considered any further. It was almost like a tabu subject, an item we couldn’t remember ever being discussed in any environment. We thought it to be an opportune time to document our own thoughts and wishes for when our time arrived, reducing some of the heartache and lessen the volume of money the legal profession could attain during this period.

Back to more happy times/vibes.

Our Canberra based family flew over mid-February to catch up with their “Adelaide family mob,” arriving in time for Granny’s 88^th birthday. Stephen’s other brother and family also travelled over from Port Lincoln (about 800 kilometres) and we all celebrated a late Christmas (with nearly all the grandchildren and Port Lincoln mob present) and 88^th birthday together. It was a wonderful occasion for Stephen’s parents with all their children present, a rare occurrence.

Meanwhile our daughter in Canada was bunkered down at home. A return to her work office was still looking very unlikely and she had now surpassed a year working from home due to the covid-19 pandemic. It was winter in Canada and as they call it, “were experiencing a good dump!”

Stephen’s parents were keen to escape their home whenever possible, still adjusting to life without a car. One of their pleasures was to experience a meal out at some old favourite and some new locations with us transporting them around. We suspected we were putting on a bit of weight, sharing their eating out passion. Another one of their wishes was to escape their home for a period of time at various holiday locations. Dad’s simple requirement was a beach location with views and nice weather. The four of us spent 3 nights in a holiday house overlooking Myponga Beach about 50 kilometres south of Adelaide. Thankfully, we managed to tick all of his wishes.

 

It was time for us to recommence our caravan travels. Stephen’s sisters were thankful for all our assistance and his other brother had returned from their travel’s offering to assist with parent duties.

The media was still full of covid-19 news (so much negativity.) There was the anxiety created by the ongoing threat of state border closures and its ramifications for non-locals to consider. We decided to play safe and stay in our home state of South Australia for the interim. The covid-19 vaccinations were starting to roll out around Australia and we thought it might be easier to stay in our home state until it was time for our jabs, yet to be determined by the officials.

Our first night back on the road was spent at a caravan park in Milang about 70 kilometres down the road. On route to Milang, we did stop at the town of Strathalbyn for a few hours chatting with a lovely couple (Nerilee and Grahame) we had first met in northern Queensland a few years prior. Then it was on to Milang where we continued chatting, catching up with one of our neighbours (Iona) of 20 plus years who had moved to Milang just 5 days prior. It was a long day, arriving at the Milang caravan park just after 6 pm where we had a small bite to eat and slept for about 10 hours after an exhausting day of chatting. Milang is located on Lake Alexandrina with some interesting shacks.

Day two we made our way to the town of Mannum located on the River Murray. We had planned to camp in a low-cost camp ground, only to find it at close to capacity. It was a Thursday prior to a long weekend with a Monday public holiday and it seemed people were already setting up camp for the long weekend. We continued north along the edge of the River Murray assessing another 4 free / low-cost camping locations, finding they were already crowded. Eventually we managed to locate a river frontage site at Greenways Landing about another 70 kilometres north of Mannum.

During our first night at Greenways Landing, we were woken by some loud grunting noise followed by the sound of the nearby river reeds being pushed about. It was an unnerving sound and when we got up in the morning, tentatively moved about our camp site looking for signs to determine the source. We were relieved once the source had been identified.

It was still a noisy location with the constant roar of motor boats on the river and motor bikes racing up and down the river flood plain on the other side of us. We decided to stay at this location till all the weekenders had departed, suspecting it to be just as busy further along our route. We were still in close proximity to the city of Adelaide and the river region does support a reasonable volume of people living along it.

Early mornings we would walk about nearby the river enjoying the sounds from many singing birds.

 

It rained late on the Sunday causing an exodus of vehicles. You could see where many had been sliding on the black clay surface. The initial 7-day weather forecast had shown a prediction of two days with a possible 5% chance of rain. It had been 3 days since we had viewed the weather prediction. Unfortunately, the latest 7-day weather forecast was now showing 6 days of rain.

Once the nearby river black clay surface becomes wet it is near impossible to walk on and stay vertical, with the movement of a vehicle on this surface creating a recipe for disaster.

We had planned to follow the river for a couple of weeks with several different camp locations pencilled in. With a revised weather prediction for daily rain, we were in need to move away from the black river clay surfaces and started researching other locations appealing to us.

A day later without any of the predicted rain eventuating we had a look at the latest weather prediction. It had changed again, now showing a possibility of one day of rain in the next 7 days. Grr. We decided to continue with our original plan, following the Murray River with our next stop at Swan Reach about 10 kilometres up the road after 5 nights at Greenways Landing.

We set camp on the opposite side of the river, overlooking the town of Swan Reach in a beautiful free camp with great river views and changing scenery.

 

There are limited road bridges over the Murray River in South Australia with the government opting to provide a free ferry service at many locations along the river. Swan Reach was a typical location with a ferry crossing provided. Once we had set up our camp we walked onto the ferry for our river crossing and walked around town spending time in an op-shop, viewing the many old stone buildings and various river side locations.

One of our groomsmen lived in the Riverland region whom we thought we would try to catch up with in a week or two along our proposed route. A phone call with John to determine a suitable time line for him showed he was about to move to night shift at work in a few days and requested, please come tomorrow. Yes, we can do that and our plans changed again. We were back on the ferry heading east towards the town of Loxton. We thought it to be an opportune time to document a ferry crossing, South Australian style and Mary rode over on the ferry prior to Steve driving onto the ferry.

Our route took us through the town of Loxton where one of Mary’s Aunties (Janet) lived and we spent a couple of hours catching up on one another’s news.

It was a drive of around 125 kilometres for the day and we camped in John and Kathy’s front yard, spending the evening chattering. With access to good internet provided by them,  we thought it to be a good time to post our first edition for 2021.