Heading to Sydney

We reluctantly left the beautiful Murray region after a detour to Wentworth to see the confluence of the Murray and Darling rivers. It was really wonderful to see the brown of the Darling meeting the blue green waters of the Murray. And such a healthy flow after all the rainfalls in northern NSW and Queensland. We drove from Mildura to Forbes ( with a night in Hay on the way). We enjoyed Gary and Judy's hospitality once again and Ray cooked us all a delicious curry dinner as our final meal together of the trip. As Forbes was rapidly becoming isolated by floodwaters, we left early the next morning and headed to Cootamundra, instead of the the blue mountains as planned, as the road to Orange was closed. This enabled us to visit Meg and Mick overnight, which was a pleasant diversion. Our final night before reaching Sydney was in Morton National Park at Bundanoon in the southern highlands - beautiful. We are currently camped in Lane Cove National Park while we wait for our apartment to become available, mid January. Its good to be home for Christmas.

The Murray River

The Murray River looks great at the moment as it is pretty full of water due to rain in the catchment areas, and it is flowing freely. The weirs are full and water is being released into the river from them, which is also increasing its flow. We camped on the banks at Renmark in South Australia and Buronga in NSW. Buronga is on the north bank from Mildura, Victoria. They are both very pleasant places and we enjoyed walking along the river banks and watching the river traffic. We did the Art Deco walk in Mildura and admired their splendid buildings. We also got caught in the most ferocious storm that Alan and I have encountered in the camper trailer ever! The wind blew us about and we had to secure the annex with two and sometimes three ropes on each pole! Then it started raining - over 70 mls overnight. We stayed dry inside though we had a river flowing under the wheels.

Eyre Peninsula South Australia

What a wonderful place this Eyre Peninsula is! The water is so clean and clear and the seafood is delicious. For the last week we have been enjoying fresh oysters, prawns, scallops and fish. We spent two nights at Streaky Bay on the West Coast, two nights at Coffin Bay on the South west coast and one night at Port Lincoln on the south east coast. The weather hasn't been brilliant but we got two really nice days in and were swimming and exploring the pristine coast. This picture is of me in Coffin Bay National Park on one of the good days. Its been very very windy and quite unpleasant and has rained practically all day today. Sadly, we are on the final week of our trip and will be in Sydney next Sunday 12th December. But it will be wonderful to see our family again.