Continuation from 10th December 2008

We have had problems with our wireless card and were unable to obtain the Internet for a while but are now back in business. Unfortunately if you don't keep these things upto date it is hard to remember what you did a month or more ago, and sometimes what you did yesterday. We played a few games of golf on the cheap days (tightarse Tuesday) up until the course was overrun with school kids.

We took a boat trip from the harbour down the river almost to the sea and back so that we got to see the power station twice and the back end of a Collins class submarine. There were two in the dry dock, but only one visible, which we assumed were in for maintenance but we were informed by another passengern that they are there because the Navy is unable to find volunteers to crew them. It's good to have such valuable assets sitting idle, but I can understand it as I'm not impressed with flopping around on the surface, never mind below it for extended periods.

We drove into Adelaide at night to see the Christmas lights but it didn't amount to much so we settled for our usual look around the local homes for christmas lights, with limited success. The regular lighting along the river was more impressive, but we did discover the Tree in Victoria Square was lit up several days after we went to see it.

We changed our plans to spend christmas in Tailem Bend as the couple we befriended in Albany took a sneak peek at the caravan park there and decided it was not up to the required standard, so we met in Kingston-on-Murray in the Riverlands. We parked next to each other but in opposite directions so that our awnings almost met to give us a huge shady area in which to have our traditional Christmas dinner. Yes, Merry did cook a turkey in the caravan. Apart from the caravan park, the town (using the word very loosely) had a general store come post office and a dozen houses, but was conveniently close to Banrock Station winery. The caravan park had its own waterfront and jetty, as did the town with rather expensive houseboats for hire ($1200 a day) but sleep 10 people. Unfortunately I couldn't find another eight girls to come with us and share the cost.

Kingston-on-Murray is close to Barmera which looks out over Lake Bonney where Donald Cambell broke the world speed record on water, but the water level is a bit low now. The small town is very pretty, as are all of the riverland towns with wide median strips lined with trees or roses. Barmera also has a dental clinic that can attend to your needs almost instantly and do extractions without trying to talk you into root canal treatment and gold crowns, and therefore saving your bank balance for better things.

We visited Renmark (the biggest of the riverland towns) on a few occassions. On one trip without me, Merry managed to have an Anaconda snake try to strangle her and covered her with crap similar to toothpaste, but smelling like the real deal.

Another trip was for shopping and sigthseeing and the third occassion was for a trip up the Murray on the steam driven paddle steamer Industry.

On the way to Renmark we passed through the small town of Monash which is home to the best free kids playground we have come across, and being big kids we spent quite a while in the large wooden fence maze, but didn't mess with the twin leaning towers which have rope bridges between, and from them, or the swings,etc.