ON THE ROAD AGAIN!


We farewelled our friends Kev, Fran and Becky at Lochinvar and travelled to Medowie to stay for a time with Howard and Lyn Grigor and “Will & Wont”. These are the 2 baby wombats that Lyn is currently hand rearing. Gorgeous little things that without her love and care would not be part of this world.

We arrived on the Friday and planned to attend the Rotary District 9670 conference in Newcastle. We are honorary members of the Rotary Club of Salamander Bay thanks to Howard and Lyn. This enables us to continue to share Rotary fellowship with clubs as we travel.

The conference was wonderful and a great place for us to catch up with friends. The Friday night was a cocktail party held at the Harbourview Function centre on the foreshore of Newcastle harbour. Saturday and Sunday was held at the Newcastle Town Hall – lovely old building. It was an inspirational conference with great speakers.

We were guest speakers at the Salamander Bay Rotary Club at the Breakfast Club meeting on the Tuesday, outlining our travels up to that point. It was nice for us to meet the members and they us, as we have sort of been their “ghost” members! Following the meeting we packed up and headed to the Southern Highlands to spend some time with family before heading west.

It was great spending time with my Mum and sister and her family. Whilst we were there, the Open Garden scheme was available in a number of the local gardens. What a lovely time I had with Mum visiting a number of them, all very different but gorgeous and innovative. We first visited a small garden in Queen Street Bowral before going to the larger ones. Milton Park was one of the old established gardens, initially being the home of Anthony Hordern. It is now a resort but the gardens are a treasure. Some of the old trees there are majestic. On the Sunday, we went out to Exeter to visit Red Cow Farm. Mum said she had driven past this cottage built in the 1800’s many times but had never visited it. It just looks like a small cottage garden from the front but what a surprise when you go in and start to explore. It was over 2.5 ha! Lovely formal areas, lakes, ponds and 800 roses! It would be a delightful garden to go back to in the spring to see the differences. It was lovely now but would be different again with the seasons.

Fitzroy Falls has always been a favourite of mine so we packed up lunch one day and with 2 other friends from Queensland went and hiked right around to the Renown Lookout. Fabulous views of the falls and the valley, dropping away from the coastal escarpment. We even spotted a lyre bird and there were some great wild flowers out too.

We also caught up with one of my favourite Aunts & Uncles! Uncle Ken cooked a lovely Good Friday meal for us of fish and chips and arranged with Walter to go down to Thirlmere and visit the Steam Train museum. Mum and Aunty Judy and I played many games of Scrabble with the results being fairly evenly distributed!

I have been home to Bowral many times over the years but had never attended the Scottish Festival at Bundanoon known as “Brigadoon”. So Mum, Walter & I packed up our lunch and headed out early on the Saturday to attend this famous affair. Even though we were early by most standards, hundreds had already arrived! For those who don’t know the area, Bundanoon is a tiny village on the Southern Highlands of NSW. For this day even the name of the village is changed, all the signs now read “Brigadoon”. This is a fabled village in Scottish folk lore that rises out of the mist each 100 years and the villages celebrate the day. They cannot leave the village or the village will disappear forever.

It was a bright sunny day and the lads and lassies had donned their kilts and the pipers had skirled their pipes for a majestic and fun day. We watched them tossing the caber, throwing the haggis, tossing the hay bale and best of all the brawny lads had to heft the “Fergie Stones”. These are huge round stones weighing from 130kgs to 160kgs. They had to be hoisted onto wine barrels sitting in a stand and with a tyre on top! The winner was a policeman from Newcastle NSW! I heard a couple of young men behind me state “that they weren’t going there for a night out”!!!

We left in time to beat the crowd and went and visited Brian & Liz Patttinson. Brian & Liz did live in Dubbo for many years before making their “sea change” to Bowral. They have a lovely home and seem very well settled in to their new environment.

We had to say goodbye so that we could continue our travels. Our plans are to travel along the Murray to its mouth in South Australia.

We headed out towards Albury and booked into the All Seasons Caravan Park in Lavington. We nearly got lost on the way in as our wonderful GPS didn’t know about the new bypass freeway! We were into Albury before we knew it and had to do some back tracking! We had a nice site but before we even had our feet on the ground we had a phone call from two lovely friends we had met in Rollingstone Qld last year. Brian and Leonie live in Wodonga. We arranged with them to go over to their place the following day.

Their hospitality was exceptional and loaded us into their car and drove us to Beechworth for lunch. Beechworth is a lovely historic gold village about 40kms south of Wodonga. We ate pies at the famous Beechworth Bakery and wandered the streets looking at the facades of the buildings – all kept in the original painting. The autumn colours were also starting to be evident. Such an interesting history. The Chinese even cut long channels through the rock to assist in channelling the water to wash the gold. The old hospital, now only the stone front remaining used to treat over a 100 patients a day. Brian drove us around the village and even out to the old Powder store. We left Beechworth and drove through Yackandandarah, buying lovely apples from a roadside stall before climbing Mt Stanley and then back down through the pine plantations. The road then took us around Lake Hume. This is terribly sad to look at, as the water level is so low. The whole area down here is so very dry, you really do feel for the farmers.

The following day we again met up with them and drove from Wodonga up to Yarrawonga, checking out some river camping spots as we went. Yarrawonga is on the Victorian side of the river and is joined to Mulwala by a whacky bridge with a bend in it. The story goes that it was a joint consultative work between the two states and their engineers but after construction had commenced, found it didn’t meet in the middle! We drove over the bridge and found a nice spot beside the lake to have afternoon tea before travelling on. We then drove along the NSW side of Lake Mulwala. We found a place mentioned in the Camps 3 book called Kyffins Reserve. We drove in and found that it had some great free camping sites. We picked out where we wanted to be and then drove back to Albury. We went up to The Monument, situated above Albury, commemorating those lost in the wars. The sun was setting in a beautiful sunset as we were there with that lovely soft light reflecting off the Monument Tower.

A quiet day was decided upon just to enjoy each others company for the next day. Brian & Leonie decided upon a BBQ for lunch so I made some rissoles to take. However, after I had finished I turned around and knocked my knife block. I felt it falling and instinctively put my hand out to stop it. Whoops! Wrong move….the carving knife had already began slipping out and it caught my little finger on the way down. The end of the story was 6 stitches! (All fixed now though). Thanks to Leonie who played nurse and medical carer getting me to Wodonga Emergency whose staff did a great job it repairing it.

We left these lovely friends and headed to Kyffins Reserve at Lake Mulwala for some free camping on the edge of the lake. Lovely spot. We relaxed and had camp fires and watched the marvellous sunsets over the lake. There was a myriad of bird life with corellas, rosellas, black swans, ibis, Azure kingfisher, ducks, grass parrots and cockatoos. Many more as well that I hadn’t even been able to identify! We also had cute little ringtail possums running around our camp at night. Many an apple went their way! After 5 days though it was time to find a caravan park to fill up the water tanks and get the washing done!

We travelled a whole 6 kms to Lake Mulwala Holiday Park. This has now been taken over by the Lake Mulwala Ski Club but it is right on the lake and a lovely place to stay. Has great cabins too. So we did the full spring clean, inside and out. They allowed us to wash the van using the fire hose as it was water from the lake. We visited the Yarrawonga Info Centre and bought some great booklets called Murray River Access! They show all the free camp sites along the river and there are heaps! So we hopped in the car and did a bit of a “reccy”! We found a great site only 5 kms from town on the Victorian side down a road known as Forges Pump Road. Lovely spot right on the river with a great sandy beach.

So we left the caravan park and headed out for some more free camping along the river. We had 4 days in this idyllic place, reading and watching the mighty Murray amble by. There was quite a bit of water here as the weir forming Lake Mulwala was just up stream. We tried fishing but didn’t catch anything. I got a bit dirty though as my line was in and the fish were jumping right in front of me!

We spent one day driving the 40kms to Rutherglen where we checked out the famous Parker Pies and went wine and olive tasting! We can really recommend the pies; they are not cheap but worth the money. I even bought a couple of frozen ones – crocodile and crab to cook in the caravan for lunch the following day. They were very delicious for those of you turning up your nose here! All Saints winery is an incredible building built like a castle and we also visited the Indigo Cheese Factory for some local produce.

Then on to Tocumwal where we invited to park the van in the yard of other lovely friends who we met in Walkamin last year. Marion & Neil have a lovely home on 4 acres. Neil normally trucks grain but with the drought there was no work last year so they took their van to Walkamin on the Atherton tableland to truck sugar.

It was so good to catch up with them and catch up on their news. They sold their van in Cairns last year on their way home but only a month ago purchase a lovely new Regal van with shower and toilet. So lovely we could nearly swap ours for it!

Again this amazing pair showed us incredible hospitality and loaded us into their car and firstly drove us out to a place called Ulupna Island. It is on the Murray and I had read about it as it has a good population of koalas. Well I can honestly say I have not ever seen anything like it. There was virtually a koala in every second tree. So good to see this unique Aussie animal in such numbers!

Then the decision was to leave fairly early and take the 2 hour drive to Bright to see the autumn colours and come back via Milawa on the Food and Wine Trail! Now we are talking….

Bright blew us both away. We had heard that this is the place to see autumn colour but I certainly wasn’t prepared for the overall effect! It is so deserving of its reputation. It was a cold and misty rainy day when we arrived but that added to the effect. It is truly stunning. It isn’t far from the Victorian Ski fields and we found that Mt Hosham had 15cm of snow whilst we were there!

The town also has a unique quality about it and also has many craft and gallery types of shops. We left there and Neil drove us out of town and up a mountain to have lunch at the Red Stag Deer and Emu Farm. The food and wine was great and the views looking back over the Bright Valley a picture. There were lots of Emus, Ostriches and the big Red Stag deer to be seen and even a little tiny baby goat in its red knitted coat was running around. We then headed toward Milawa and firstly Brown Brothers winery. No poor wines on that list let me tell you! After buying a few good bottles we headed for the Milawa Cheese factory where we were able to participate in a great cheese tasting, then it was the chocolates. Loaded up with the “3 course meal” (wine, cheese and chocolates) we headed for Milawa Mustards. Here we undertook more tasting of mustards, tapenades and raspberry jams! Laden to the hilt we drove home via Wangaratta back to Tocumwal where we had a plate of soup for tea!

Again, we had to say goodbye and off we drove again, this time to Echuca. Cold and rainy but we are about now to go out and explore the historic port area here. The weather was not very kind to us and so we didn’t venture very far.

Saturday we decided again that it was time for greener fields so we headed off from Echuca towards Swan Hill. Swan Hill was named by Major Mitchell who had spent a sleepless night on the banks of the Murray on this spot, being kept awake by the noise of some swans – hence the name!

We met up with some lovely friends again, Steve and Vicki. We initially met them at Walkamin on the Atherton tableland, then again at Cooktown, then Yeppoon and then Mon Repos before moving into NSW and meeting them again in Dubbo. So we have had such fun being with them again. We have a great camping site on the river bank. Not quite the Murray but what they call an Anna branch. It is the “Little Murray” or Marraboor River. It comes off the Murray and runs into the Murray. We are only 100 yards from where it runs back into the Murray. The Paddle steamer makes its way past us twice a day, tooting its horn.

We have spent 2 days at the Pioneer Village. We initially thought that 2-3 hours would do it including the ride on the paddle boat but the village was so extensive and so interesting we extended our passes to go back again today. The village was wonderful and has something for everyone.

Tomorrow we are going to attend the huge Rural Field day here that show cases not only all the farm machinery and innovations but all the local produce including the wines for tasting! Its only $3.00 for pensioners! So we’ll be there…..

We will report on this jaunt in our next spiel..

Hope you are all well and life is treating you gently.

The Happy Travellers

Rob & Walter