Day 7 – Paddys River to Walwa

A beautiful morning and under normal circumstance we would have stayed another night.  It’s not really the place you can run a gennie for hours, and quite frankly I’m not sure how long it would take to charge everything backup.    Nothing for it, but to visit a Caravan park and recharge.  It’s about halfway through the trip so a load or two of washing needs to be done anyway.

We review wikicamps and the nicest option is the Walwa Caravan park on the banks of the Murray River.  About 60km away.   A quick call to make sure they have a powered site, it is a long weekend after all.  All good.

While we’re packing up one of the other kids, around 6yo, comes over to look at the rod he left in the water, be damned, there is a trout on it, a good size one too, trouble is too big for his gear and the line breaks, poor kid.

Given the walking track is closed, we firstly take a morning drive over to Paddy’s Falls without the van.   While it might only be a 1 or 2km walk. The road trip is closer to 8k.   We drive in and the waterfalls are pretty nice.  In warmer weather a swim might have been an option, but not this morning.

Back to the van, hitch up and we head towards Walwa.  Over the Murray and into Victoria.  It’s really amazing how green the land is here.  I’ve been out west and it is so dry, but here it seems like there is no drought at all.  Walwa is really small, basically a general store and a pub.  The van park is about 1km away on the actual river.  We pull in and it is a really small park.  Being the long weekend all the spots on the river are taken so we take a spot one row back.  Plug in and start charging.  Two loads of washing, fortunately it is sunny.

We walk down to the river and it’s flowing a quite a pace, but even this far upstream the river it is still murky and the banks are muddy, so not terribly great for a dip.  

The kids magnetically are attracted to another group of kids staying at the van park.  Before too long they are all down on the side of the river getting very muddy, but having fun.

We chat to one of the kids’ dads, apparently, they come here once or twice a year with an extended family group.  We ask about the Pub for dinner, but get advised the pub about 4km up the road at Jingellic is better, this backs up some wikicamp comments, so early evening we drive up for dinner, my steak was great, the other meals could have been better.    We’ve had some lunches out, but this is the first dinner.  So far this must be the most economical holiday we’ve ever had.

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