Day 55 UPDATE NOTESMay 1, 2012
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Swan Hill Piuoneer Settlement
Early model Jayco....oops
Up the river
| Hi All, Well the Murray River has been followed as far as we can so we have seen her from near the mouth to the headwaters. As we travelled we saw her get smaller in both depth and width but we have seen her flowing which in itself is a thrill as quite often in times of drought she does not flow and the tourist paddle steamers just cannot get through. We saw her with full flow and no floods apart from floodplains being wet. She is a mighty river and provides irrigation water for huge tracts of land otherwise probably now very farmable. After Swan Hill we stayed at Echuca where the old wharf is being renovated unfortunately for us,then Rutherglen and Corryong. It’s funny seeing and hearing about inland waters have “ports”, and we have seen several, but in the old days the locals used the paddle steamers to get the produce from the farm to the ports. Coincidently the ports also had rail heads so the produce was transferred to the rail and then travelled by rail to the cities. Travelling to Corryong we took a wrong turn after visiting Hume Weir and drove along part of the Hume Dam with dead trees which was just an amazing sight. The road, being basically single lane, dirt and not really suitable for big caravans was of little consequence as the views were unreal. At Corryong we found a gem of a caravan park which even provided fire boxes so we had a good fire for a BBQ tea and sat around it for Happy Hour and was joined by a possum in the tree above. There has been an upside to our delayed departure and direction change and a down side. The sad downside was the cold, much colder then we like to caravan in as we are just not able to sit outside in the morning or evening without freezing. For the last week or so the outside night temperature has been about 1 to 5 if we are lucky. The upside is it’s now autumn and all the deciduous trees are in full autumn colours in all their glory. And if you can imagine all the old country towns with carefully planted trees along the road it’s is just spectacular, so you can probably imagine the number of photos we have taken. Leaving the river we drove north through towns such as Khancoban, Tumbarumba, Tumut, Gundagai stayed a night at Goulburn and then to warmer parts finally back on the coast at The Entrance. From here it will be a few days home after about 11 weeks on the road and over 8,000kms. Looking forward to seeing everyone again soon after another great journey. Mum and Dad UM & AA Anne and Marco GM & GD |
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