The last part of our trip is proving to be quite relaxing. No plans today other than Sharon getting a hair cut or maybe a hair experience looking at the salon? We had no reason to leave the caravan park early so I got the gas cylinder filled before we left, we would have enough for the rest of the trip with out any worries now, it was pretty much empty anyway, cheapest of the trip – $14. The caravan park was right on the banks of the Murray and there were plenty of houseboats on the other side of the river.

Houseboats opposite the caravan park

Just past the houseboats

I had a walk around Renmark CBD and found a few open WIFI networks to download a few geocaches for the next few days. NAB bank has free WIFI as does the library and some place near the Beta Electrical store. The library has super fast bandwidth and I wish I had of found it first.

We drove off after the hair experience (I feel human again now!) and just headed down the Sturt Highway in the general direction of Mildura. We thought we were at the racetrack at one truck stop with a big Dunlop bridge over the highway, it turned out to be the quarantine check point and associated truck stop and BP. Along the way we also stopped at a tree along the Sturt that had been ‘yarn bombed’, see this link for info.

‘yarn bombed’ tree in the middle of nowhere

Are we on a racetrack?

We arrived in Mildura and all the traffic (not much really) and roads / lights etc had us on edge. I’m not sure what is worse dodging the high speed Britz campers on the gravel or driving in an unfamiliar town with people going everywhere at warp speed with zero patience? We managed to get into the visitors information centre without too much grief apart from parking in a bus zone along the way. Attached to the visitors centre complex is a pool with a wave machine that looked kinda fun till you counted all the kids in there because it was school holidays everywhere over here at the moment.

We found our way down to the Apex park on the Murray River banks and a quite spot with tables and BBQ’s and only a couple of guys fishing on the bank. We had lunch with one of those pesky birds sitting about arms length away the whole time. The guys fishing looked like they had no hope of catching anything but blow me down he reeled in a nice looking Yellow Belly, he was pretty excited about it to and didn’t mind telling his mate how good he was…..

Paddle steamer afternoon cruise as we ate lunch

We decided Mildura had nothing to keep our attention so we headed off to do an afternoon wine tasting at Trentham wines only just out of town on the highway. Our electronic navigator ‘Lee’ took us around a stupid route and underneath the big bridge we needed to be on and said ‘turn left’ – INTO THE WATER ‘Lee’! I took over and got him back on track once I got him on the bridge above us.

Trentham wines was well presented and plenty of tasting were had as they kept feeding them into us. We tried a few different reds at the insistence of the wine guru plus Sharon had quite a few whites and some bubbles. I was driving so just had a few sips of the last lot. We purchased our favorites and a good bottle of bubbles for our 25th wedding anniversary shortly after we get back. After all that wine we went down into their restaurant and had coffee and some bread and duhka with their own balsamic and olive oil. It went down nicely and was not to expensive either.

The winery fronting onto the Murray of course caters for house boats and three were tied up out the front. One of them we had noticed when we pulled into the carpark as it was doing strange turns and circles and generaly looked out of control almost hard up against the bank. The girl who served us confirmed all this and had a good laugh about it as they got one of the guys at the winery to go down and dock it for them. Apparently mud was flying everywhere at one stage. When they left I thought another disaster was brewing as they had no idea about currents and wind. They eventually got it out into the middle of the river, it was worth watching.

We decided Mildura was not worth going back to and we headed down the road to find a free roadside stop tonight. We took a 26Km detour off the Sturt to Lake Benanee. Another Tassie caravan here tonight as well. We got onto the 4WD track and headed right away from everybody else right on the lake in the shelter of the trees. We lost another 30 minutes today when we changed time zones from SA – VIC. By pure accident we have also crossed VIC to NSW. That only leaves ACT and QLD we have not visited this trip but anything could happen in the next few days……