I’ve come to the conclusion that living a Grey Nomad’s lifestyle requires large doses of tolerance. How so? Well, let me explain:
Having gone to sleep rather late on our last night at Dubbo
I was none too pleased when I was woken at about 4am by rummaging, clonking and
scraping noises that seemed to be coming from a source pretty close to our van.
As we’d been forewarned that thieves are not uncommon in caravan parks in
general, and in that neck of the woods in particular, my sleepy mind conjured up
images of someone attempting to break into our car. Okay, I may sound paranoid
(or so my darling husband would tell me!!) but I’d find losing my laptop really
rather distressing. This thought immediately jolted me out of any remnants of
sleep and caused me to sit bolt-upright in my bed. My sudden movement, whilst going
completely unnoticed by my soundly sleeping husband (yep, he’d sleep through a
bomb attack!!) gravely upset Miss Kiddle who’d been blissfully snoozing,
snuggled right up to my backside. She immediately made me aware of her
displeasure of having her sleep so rudely interrupted by digging a sharp claw
into my rear end, which I must say is a rather tender part of my anatomy.
Whilst letting some choice words escape my lips my ears remained firmly cocked
towards the noise and I was wondering what to do. After a few more minutes of
adrenaline pumping through my weary system I figured out that the alarming
noises were actually coming from a different source and decided that it was
time to go back to sleep. Great idea (as my hubby would say) but by now the nocturnal
noises had managed to wake the birds who immediately broke into a cheerful (somewhat
premature) morning concert, which was definitely the death knell to my hope of
more sleep. So I grumpily conceded defeat and decided to investigate instead.
I was outraged to discover that the rummaging, clonking and
scraping noises had been made by the people in the neighbouring van, who’d thought
it appropriate to start at 4am preparing for their morning departure. How very
rude!! Surely even caravan parks have a certain behaviour code, which
presumably includes not packing up and rehitching before the break of dawn.
Someone please hand me a blow dart - I know just where I’d like to shoot that
dart!!
That same morning, thankfully though at a much more godly
hour, we also left the caravan park. Having been told that Lake Carjelico is
worth a visit we decided to head in that direction.
Ian had mumbled something about getting petrol the day
before but since he hadn’t stopped at any of the petrol stations we’d passed as
we were leaving Dubbo, he clearly wasn’t too worried about this. The GPS told
us that we had another 50km to cover when we became aware of the petrol gauge
starting to sink faster than the cruise ship Concordia. Ian, who’d been puzzled
about the unusually high petrol consumption, eventually decided that it must be
the very strong headwind that was responsible for our car being so very thirsty.
50km to go on a deserted stretch of road and not a petrol station in sight!
Needless to say we both felt a little nervous by this stage and the relief was
enormous when we finally rolled into a village, literally on our last few drops
of petrol.
Lake Carjelico, no doubt a popular summer holiday
destination, unfortunately was almost completely deserted. Braving the howling
wind to wander down to the lake, we discovered a couple of families enjoying
the lake-side, but that was it. The village/town, or whatever one might call
it, was deserted as a church hall on a weekday morning. It was an easy decision
to leave Lake Carjelico the following morning and set out for yet another
rather lengthy drive. It isn’t that long ago that Ian would drive for no longer
than about 3 hours. On this trip, however, he’s taken to quite happily drive
for about 6 hours each day (at least thus far). Since I’ve found online
Scrabble, which I can play on my iPad as long as we have mobile coverage and on
straight stretches manage to do a fair bit of reading which I love doing, I
don’t mind the long stretches either.
After about 6 hours we arrived in Moama, a town on the NSW
side of the Victorian border that is nestled by the Murray River, we managed to
find a really nice caravan park and decided to stay for a couple of nights.
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| MURRAY RIVER |
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| MOAMA ON THE MURRAY RIVER |
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| ECHUCA |
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| ECHUCA |
The highlights of that stay were:
1. discovering
a tennis court. Since I’d recently started playing tennis and was hoping to get
in some practice throughout our trip, I was totally delighted by this
discovery,
2. wine
tasting, which particularly delighted Ian and resulted in us buying a few
bottles of ‘the good stuff’ and
3. fishing,
which Ian just loves, even if he doesn’t catch anything.
With tennis, fishing and wine tasting we enjoyed a rather
pleasant couple of days in really pretty surroundings and I am pleased to
report that we didn’t have any early morning disturbances either. Kiddle was a
bit perturbed by the multitude of ducks that kept pecking around the caravan,
but apart from that none of us had any complaints whatsoever.
Although I am thoroughly enjoying my time at this (Maiden’s
Inn) caravan park, I am now champing at the bit to get to The Great Ocean Road,
our next destination.
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