Down the Murray into Victoria

Spent a restful few days camped by the Murray river enjoying the tranquility, though this picture above is at lake Alexandrina down at the mouth of the Murray. The Murray river spot was another fantastic free camp provided by the small township of Walker Flat, just a few small clearings right on the banks of the Murray with a small toilet block near the entrance. The peacefulness of the river was only broken now and then by houseboats meandering up and down the river.

Many of these house boats were like luxury houses or really quite a bit larger than most houses and most were also hire boats, I guess holidays cruising up the Murray are a popular thing to do.

Over the three night we camped here, I think there was only perhaps 2 other people came and camped in the area. In this picture below I climbed a hill to get an over all view of the area, you can see the van parked by the side of the river.

And if you’re really lucky, at some point while your relaxing by the the river, you might get to see one of these old beauties go by, an old paddle steamer.

But you still have to keep moving on if you want to see lots of this vast country and I’ve made a mental note to myself that I need to come and explore the Murray river further. In fact while I was there I started to look up houseboats for sale online, who knows, perhaps one day I’ll trade the van in for a house boat and do some different exploring via water.

We continued down the Murray toward Lake Alexandrina, the enormous lake at the mouth of the Murray river. Once again found a lovely free camp spot right on the edge of the lake, it was a huge grassed area with some bins and a couple of toilets, magnificent spot except that it was quite busy with other campers and also there were a lot of duck shooters in the area.

There’s nothing quite like it, breaking the serenity of a beautiful spot at 6.30 in the morning when you hear guns going off. Then as you’re enjoying the late afternoon sun you have the same joy of shotguns ringing out.

After a couple of nights camped here, and realizing that school holidays had started the camp was starting to get some noisy families arrive, it was time to make a run for the Victorian border, school holidays had just finished in Victoria.

A quick overnight stop in Beachport, the weather wasn’t kind, it was blowing a gale and we were in a little free camp, basically a car park at the beach, but by the morning the wind had stopped and the ocean was a big bank of fog, very different from the night before.

Next stop was Mount Gambier to get a few supplies and see a couple of things there before hitting the border. The Blue lake was a little bit of a disappointment I thought, I’d expected perhaps a little more blue, maybe it was the day and the light wasn’t the best, but none of my photos were great, it was just a lake.

But what I did find quite impressive was the Umpherston sink hole on the way out of town.

This is a large sinkhole in the ground which over the years has been turned into a lovely garden oasis, ivy and other creepers hang down from the rim in huge thick blankets. The Hanging creepers hide some large areas of overhang cave like areas  and they have cut holes through the creepers where the walkways are so that you can see out into the gardens.

It’s free and well worth a visit if you’re in the area, there’s also a lovely park area around the sinkhole where you can wander or relax.

But on wards into Victoria, we’d found a free camp site in Annya forest, a magnificent camp with a fairly new long drop toilet, a huge spacious grassed area littered with campfires, picnic tables and plenty of area for people to park vans or pitch tents. After almost a month travelling with Cloudy we had picked this spot as a farewell camp, after which she would be heading quickly to Melbourne to sell her car and return to Germany. I was looking forward to a far more leisurely trip from here to Melbourne exploring the area.

And what  a great spot it has turned out to be here at Annya forest, there are many koalas around once you know what you’re looking for, you may notice one in a tree, but then after watching that one for a few minutes you realize that there are 3 or 4 more in the same tree in different places. The koala above really seemed like he had some attitude and looked a bit upset that we were disturbing his day time sleep, while the next one was just looking super cute.

This following image will give you an idea of how high up they were, these were the lowest ones we found, so good for photos. It was interesting at night hearing the males grunting, they make quite an impressive noise for such a small animal.