We all sleep in. After breakfast, I take a walk up to the next bend in the river. Unlike where we are, you can get down to the river pretty easy, it might have been a old boat ramp or something., There is a small beach here too.
The lads are much quieter this morning (hangover?) and seem to be packing up. So tonight should be quieter
Another house boat makes it way by.
I take a quick trip into town, I want to get some more firewood. Also while I’ve got a small axe, it is really hard to break some of the bigger logs, so I get a log splitter from Bunnings while I’m there. Yesterday we drove up what seemed to be the main street of Echuca, but today I find there seems to be two main streets, the tourist one and the regular one. We’ll have more time tomorrow.
It’s Liam’s birthday on Tuesday, the plan was obviously to be at home, it will be one of the few time his birthday is not in the school holidays, let alone being away. He wants to be in a caravan park and no driving. I had been looking at maybe going to Shepparton, but it seems that might be the meth capital of Victoria and maybe not that much to see. So we’ve elected just to go back into town, there is an NRMA park only about 500mtr from the main historic wharf, and the local cinema will be open on Tuesday.
It seems most other campers are packing up and leaving, and by the time we’ve had lunch there is only one other caravan here, well if you could call it a caravan, it’s one of those small teardrop jobbies. We’ve seen heaps of them on this trip. A bed on wheels really.
After lunch we all go for a walk up to the bend in the river and then along a track by the river to the far boat ramp, on the way back we see a few roos off in the scrub.
It’s a bit overcast so a bit colder than yesterday, so I get the fire (and the diesel heater) going a little earlier than normal. The group next to us have left a number of logs behind, last night they went to town burning pallets, at first they start cutting them up, but it seems that got too hard, so they started to pile them on whole. It was a cross between the cremation scene with Darth Vader out of “Return of the Jedi” and someone setting the dining table on fire. We now realise why they left the logs, must be too green as they just don’t burn.
A wonderful dusk and the clouds have a wonderful pink hue.
Justine and Liam are inside getting dinner prepared, Caitlin and I are around the fire. Out of the corner of my eye I seem movement, some little animal comes out of the undergrowth from the river. I go to get my phone to get a shot and it dives back to towards the river. Moment later, seemingly driven by instinct it comes up and races by us and up a nearby tree. We grab the torch and find it up a tree feeding on the gum blossoms, this ring-tailed possum! The fact that it came up from the river so close to us and the fire was pretty amazing.
That’s a very trendy house boat, wouldn’t mind having a holiday on that.
Another super camp fire; it looks like such a beautiful spot to be camped, nice to have the place almost to yourselves.
You are building up such a store of great memories that the kids will carry for the rest of their lives.