2010/09 Australia trip - Shepparton and Tocumwal |
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Tuesday September 21st
We were setting off on Australia’s first day of Spring, a dull, drizzly day. Our route to Yea went between green hills and vineyards, very lush after all the rain, but this was one of the worst areas in the February 2009 fires. In the Kinglake Forest, tall blackened trees were sprouting new vegetation all the way up, as usually happens when there is no shade from the tree canopy.
We had lunch by the Goulburn River, now placid but bearing signs of recent very high water. From Yea, we were headed to Shepparton, a last-minute change of plans........
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...... headed for our planned camping spot, on the Murray River at Tocumwal. On the way we passed Numurkah, the site of their wedding back in 2004.
At the Murray we missed the turnings to the camping spots and crossed the bridge into New South Wales, so we did a quick u-turn at the roundabout after the bridge, only to be confronted by a big sign “Illegal to bring fruit into Victoria”. Sandie’s oranges and grapefruit from John and Edna’s trees had become illegal immigrants, carriers of the deadly fruit fly just because they’d breathed the New South Wales air.
As it turned out, all the tracks down to the river were closed, mostly underwater, so we crossed back into NSW and camped at 
Tocumwal’s town campground, also on the river. We were supposed to pay the warden but the locals said that his little office had been washed away by the floods, so we were in for free, just before dark.
We quickly set up, ate, and headed up to bed. I should explain that the camper came with two beds, a low, very narrow one, an extension of the sofa, and a roof bed made from plywood boards. I’d only ever used the roof bed on one trip when it was too hot and sticky for us both to use the narrow one. Sandie suggested we both use the top bed for this trip as it’s quite a bit wider. The camper’s roof pivots at the front and is raised up at the back end so it’s only practical for us to sleep with our feet at the front end. We have to climb up to the bed via a one-foot-wide access space above the stove and then nimbly flip over and slot our feet into the sleeping bag, easy if you happen to be an Olympic gymnast but harder for us stiffer folk! Maybe we should take yoga lessons before our next trip.
But that’s once we’d had some practice! On this, our first attempt, I’d parked with the camper’s front end too high, so very quickly we and our cushions slid downhill and backwards on the smooth plywood boards, resulting in some uncomfortable gaps in the cushions and also closing up the access space so we couldn’t get out. All we had to do to fix it was to push the cushions back, but there was now air under the cushions and we both had cramp from the contortions. Our cursing and laughing would have kept the campground awake, but we had the whole place to ourselves.
Wednesday September 22nd
It was a cold and damp night, with a thick mist over the river. It was good to see though that the Murray had lots of water after being dry for so many years. We slept OK despite the truck traffic running all night across the bridge. We were awakened just before dawn by a bedlam of kookaburras, with supporting vocals by rosellas, galahs, and cockatoos.