Sonja & Ian's Excellent Travel Adventures - Day 4, 5 & 6

LAKE  CARJELICO, ECHUCA & MOAMA

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.

MURRAY RIVER

MOAMA ON THE MURRAY RIVER

ECHUCA

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. 

Sonja & Ian's Excellent Travel Adventures - Year 2

Review of Day 1, 2 & 3 - DUBBO

Oh no, she’s not!!.......... Oh yes, she is!

Miss Kiddle, previously known as reluctant, resistant travel puss, does it again. Just as we are thundering along the freeway, a ‘telling’ sound eminates from between her whiskers at the same time as she crouches in a suspicious fashion and … wouldn’t you know it, begins doing her business – but not any old business – no, she’s doing a poo. As she is  standing in her travel basket, which rests on my lap, with her tail pointing stiffly toward the heavens, I get a pretty good view of what’s going on and thinking fast, manage to grab a ‘wet one’ and, would you believe, to catch her gracious offering in mid-drop. Gross?! Yes it is rather, but it’s better than having to find an appropriate place to stop the car, clean up her mess, redress her basket etc.etc. Been there, done that (more than once) and so have learnt to anticipate. If you were to think right now that Miss Kiddle has me pretty well organised, you’d be oh so right. I just hope that the delightful start to this year’s first caravan trip is not an omen of things yet to come.

This incident took place 5 days ago just as we commenced our journey and has thankfully remained the only such incident thus far. The remainder of the trip to Dubbo, our first stop, was quite uneventful. After smuggling Miss Kiddle into the caravan park we proceeded with our setting up tasks. Ian’s jobs are to unhitch, connect the various hoses, extend the awning, set up our outside table and chairs and do whatever else needs to be done on the outside. My jobs are those that take place on the inside of the van. Oh yes, after a 1½ years of caravan ownership we function like a well-oiled machine – a well-oiled creaky machine, for sure, but it functions all the same.

Now, before I forget to mention this, I must confess the criminal behaviour we’ve taken to since our caravan ownership. Because there is no way we can leave our rather ancient cat behind, we frequently have to smuggle her into places (caravan parks that don’t allow pets, national parks etc.) where she is not welcome. But because she NEVER sets a paw outside our van we don’t feel too badly about having become criminals in our dotage.

Our time in Dubbo was excellent. We met up and spent one delightful evening with one of our son’s girlfriend’s family. The next day we (that’s our son, his lovely young lady and us oldies) took a bike ride around the famous Dubbo Zoo. Even though it was a mighty hot day and we were sweltering we still enjoyed the experience. It’s clearly been a fruitful few months at Dubbo Zoo. Almost all the animals, we encountered, were surrounded by their young. An Elan mum had given birth less than an hour before we arrived at the scene. By the time we got there her baby, wobbling around on spindly legs, was busy nursing whilst Elan mum greedily devoured the afterbirth. No doubt, a necessity for Elans living in the wild, but a somewhat off-putting sight, or so some other onlookers seemed to think.

The Meerkats, my absolute favourites, put on a great performance. Tumbling all over each other in their frenetic play, the little ones were a sight to behold whilst the adult Meerkats took it in turns to stand guard, keeping a sharp eye out for hungry hawks and whatever other predators might present danger.

Whilst the Meerkats are pretty high on the hyperactivity scale, the Lemurs aren’t too far behind. I had the good fortune to capturing them as they were being fed and couldn’t stop laughing at their wonderful antics.

One of the most delightful sights however was the monkey mother with her (I believe) brand-new baby. Although mum was intent on showing us the cold shoulder, every so often the baby would slip off her lap, clamber around her into our line of sight and, to everyone’s delight, try a few steps on his/her own. It was the cutest sight to observe this little creature as it stumbled about until it was scooped up by its mum and safely returned into her welcoming lap. To see video clips of the above experiences, just click here.

So, as you can see, we had a wonderful time at Dubbo Zoo. Because of the almighty heat on that day we were very pleased to be able to cool down at the caravan park’s swimming pool, where we spend the next few hours.

As the sun set, Ian and I celebrated the day with a glass of wine, toasting each other on the successful start of this year’s first caravanning  adventure.