Sunday 16th August 09
Left Broken Hill on yet another windy day, and meandered down to Mildura arriving around 3.30pm and as it was still a bit windy opted to leave the awning and annex down until tomorrow if the weather is less windy. The caravan park is a few kilometres out of town alongside the Murray River. Later in the day we drove into town to find Kmart for Merry to buy some knitting needles to knit Foxy another jumper for the cooler weather.
Monday 17th August 09
I erected the annex whilst Merry sorted the finances on the laptop and also removed unwanted programs from the old laptop, and then installed the required programs on the new laptop. I used this opportunity to use the old laptop to update this blog.
In the late afternoon we took Foxy for a walk along part of the river bank.
Tuesday 18th August 09
Today’s highlight was a quick visit to Dick Smith’s to buy a wireless mouse and then went to the Jayco agents for an antenna socket and came perilously close to trading the caravan for a bigger, better, version but the $11000 difference helped us to resist, plus the extra weight would exceed the cars recognised towing limit due to having an automatic gearbox.
Wednesday 19th August 09
Merry worked on the SAFE bookkeeping whilst I worked on the old laptop to produce a DVD of our trip in South Australia.
Thursday 20th August 09
This was a pleasantly warm day out backtracking to Wentworth to see the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers which also included a visit to Lock 10 where we had lunch.
Left Broken Hill on yet another windy day, and meandered down to Mildura arriving around 3.30pm and as it was still a bit windy opted to leave the awning and annex down until tomorrow if the weather is less windy. The caravan park is a few kilometres out of town alongside the Murray River. Later in the day we drove into town to find Kmart for Merry to buy some knitting needles to knit Foxy another jumper for the cooler weather.
Monday 17th August 09
I erected the annex whilst Merry sorted the finances on the laptop and also removed unwanted programs from the old laptop, and then installed the required programs on the new laptop. I used this opportunity to use the old laptop to update this blog.
In the late afternoon we took Foxy for a walk along part of the river bank.
Tuesday 18th August 09
Today’s highlight was a quick visit to Dick Smith’s to buy a wireless mouse and then went to the Jayco agents for an antenna socket and came perilously close to trading the caravan for a bigger, better, version but the $11000 difference helped us to resist, plus the extra weight would exceed the cars recognised towing limit due to having an automatic gearbox.
Wednesday 19th August 09
Merry worked on the SAFE bookkeeping whilst I worked on the old laptop to produce a DVD of our trip in South Australia.
Thursday 20th August 09
This was a pleasantly warm day out backtracking to Wentworth to see the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers which also included a visit to Lock 10 where we had lunch. 
After lunch we inspected the Wentworth Gaol, followed by a trip round part of the heritage trail that included an Inkberry Tree, then drove out to the local sand hills.
The sand hills seem to be in the middle of nowhere and somewhat out of place being so close to the river, but make it obvious that you are not far from the desert either. You would expect them to be by a beach.
We finished the Wentworth trip with a 2km return walk along the strip of land between the two rivers to view the Lock from the tip of the junction,
and then stopped on the journey home to take photos of the Murray Bridge, which has a centre section that can be lifted to allow paddle boats, and houseboats, through. On the way to and from Wentworth we passed through the small town of Merbein which may, or may, not get a more thorough inspection as the weather forecast is not real good for the next few days.
Friday 21st August 09 and Saturday 22nd August 09. These two days remain a mystery so it can only be assumed that the weather did perform badly as predicted.
Sunday 23rd August 09
Being a day of acceptable weather we packed a lunch and went to ‘King’s Billabong Wildlife Reserve’ as this allows dogs on a leash.
Friday 21st August 09 and Saturday 22nd August 09. These two days remain a mystery so it can only be assumed that the weather did perform badly as predicted.
Sunday 23rd August 09
Being a day of acceptable weather we packed a lunch and went to ‘King’s Billabong Wildlife Reserve’ as this allows dogs on a leash.
It has a range of walk trails with most of them out of our league but we managed one to a bird hide and back via a more inland route which took just over an hour to complete. We then had lunch near the car park before driving through the reserve to the ‘Psyche pumps’ which is the location of the old steam driven pump station that supplied water to the surrounding area, which is now supplied by the electric driven pumps nearby. It has been restored to it’s former glory but was not open at that time of day so we headed back through town and visited the Trentham Estate winery. On the way back we deviated to the Botanical gardens but only had a quick drive through to determine whether it was worth stopping for a proper look, which proved in the negative. Winter is not the best time for gardens of any sort.Monday 24th August 09
This was a very windy day with a threat of rain so I worked on the DVD of SA for most of the day.
Tuesday 25th August 09
The weather improved enough for us to drive to Merbein after lunch and checked the common for the walk trails that proved a bit uninteresting, so we sought out the lookout and white cliffs. We found the lookout after finding another area to leave the car and walked down to the river near the water draw off point that presumably feeds into the irrigation system.
We then found the lookout which allowed views of the river and along the white cliffs. Unfortunately there wasn’t a good view of the cliffs and they were only on the side of the river that we were on. We did, however, take a short walk along the cliff top.
We then drove back to Mildura via a different route to visit the advertised ‘Snakes and Ladders’ which turned out to be purely a kids playground so we didn’t stop.
Wednesday 26th August 09
We took an afternoon visit to ‘Woodsies Gem Shop’ which boasts an ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ A café which is also done out as a cave, and a maze. The gem shop is a girls dream and to add to the interest they put on demonstrations of gem stone cutting, polishing, etc, after which Merry had some lunch (she had a late breakfast) and then we collected Foxy from the car and took her into the maze. The maze was very well laid out and kept us amused for quite a long time and probably still didn’t see all of it. We gave it away when a bus load of school kids turned up and started running around yelling and screaming. Like us, Foxy dislikes kids that run and yell.
Wednesday 26th August 09
We took an afternoon visit to ‘Woodsies Gem Shop’ which boasts an ‘Aladdin’s Cave’ A café which is also done out as a cave, and a maze. The gem shop is a girls dream and to add to the interest they put on demonstrations of gem stone cutting, polishing, etc, after which Merry had some lunch (she had a late breakfast) and then we collected Foxy from the car and took her into the maze. The maze was very well laid out and kept us amused for quite a long time and probably still didn’t see all of it. We gave it away when a bus load of school kids turned up and started running around yelling and screaming. Like us, Foxy dislikes kids that run and yell.
We drove back into town and parked the car and walked around collecting photos of the interesting buildings and monuments.
After this we drove along the riverside to Lock 11 and then on to Mildura Homestead which provided us with another way back to the caravan park.
Thursday 27th August 09
We have now seen all that we need to see of the area so used this as our washing day prior to preparing to move on. It also allowed me to continue with the SA DVD.
Friday 28th August 09
This was treated as a completely lazy day apart from a little shopping and finally completing the SA DVD.
Thursday 27th August 09
We have now seen all that we need to see of the area so used this as our washing day prior to preparing to move on. It also allowed me to continue with the SA DVD.
Friday 28th August 09
This was treated as a completely lazy day apart from a little shopping and finally completing the SA DVD.
Saturday 29th August 09
The day was spent removing the annexe and rolling up the awning and general packing in readiness for an early start for our move in the morning.
Sunday 30th August 09
Left Mildura on yet another windy day, and headed towards Melbourne. The overall distance to Melbourne is further than we normally travel at any on time but we also wanted to be close enough to Melbourne to ensure a short and easy trip to the Storage area we had arranged with Fort Knox, as we were leaving the caravan for a while to stay with our son and daughter-in-law in Melbourne. We made our overnight stop at Kyneton which fulfilled our requirements but would have been nicer without the drizzle.
Monday 31st August 09
Set up the navman to take us to the Dandanong storage area avoiding toll roads and expected to circumnavigate the city to avoid the madhouse traffic. Unfortunately the navman has a warped sense of humour and took us over the Westgate bridge on a windy day, but fortunately it was a tail wind. Having survived that we headed for as much traffic and narrow roads, including trams, that the navman could find, so I can now claim to be fairly experienced at towing a caravan in traffic. I thought it was bad enough in Adelaide and can think of better things to do.
We did manage to avoid Swanson and Burke streets so I imagine the navman may be thinking he made life easy for me. After delivering the caravan to the storage area we headed for the safety of our son's house where we expected to have to let ourselves in, as both Garon and Sue work, but Melbournes weather had rained off Sue's day so we had a welcoming reception. Also very fortunate, Foxy and the resident cat 'Sox' have agreed to get along together whereby the dog ignores the cat, but the cat likes to tease the dog, but no fighting.
