I had loosely planned a trip out to Western NSW, Lake Mungo and Menindee lakes, but then Artie the cat turned up and the idea of being away for close to 2 weeks was pretty much out of the question.
Looking at something closer to home and a bit shorter, I thought about Ganguddy, (Dunn’s Swamp) that Liam and I camped at a year or so back.
So, we’re booked in for just 5 nights and my nephew Jono is house sitting and minding the cat.
Day 1 – Saturday 13th
Up around 7, we’ve still got all the food and cloths packing to complete. We pull out around 9:30. There’s less traffic on the M4 than I expected on the first day of school holidays.
That is ‘till we cross the Nepean and hit the bottom of the blue mountains climb, here the traffic grinds to a halt. Fortunately, (well for us anyway) it’s just an accident on the climb up, so after about a 1k we’re on our way again. The mountains are start/stop with traffic lights etc all the way. That’s until we reach Lawson, where another accident causes 15mins or so of tailback.
Down Victoria pass and through the outskirts of Lithgow. Here we turn off to Mudgee. Through some hamlets, and we turn off the Castlereagh just after Ilford. Finally, into Kandos and we go to the bakery for a late lunch. The pies where all pretty good, but might have been nicer at 9am then 2pm…. (3.5 / 5)
Kandos
Walking the town, Justine notices some shoes in a store window. Shoes from the company that we pull off the road at Bomaderry on the 1st day of the Melbourne trip, but they where closed. Unfortunately, they have nothing in Justine’s size.
It’s still another 30odd K’s to the campground. The road seems to have been sealed at least another 10kms or more than I recall last time. I’m relieved to find out, what I thought to be a super narrow section of damaged road near a farm has been fixed and sealed too. From memory it felt narrow with just the car, so with the van I was a bit concerned.
So, it’s only the last 5-10ks that is dirt, it starts near where the road passes through some narrow rocks, it’s so steep here, that the car’s wheels are spinning trying to drag the van up this steep slippery incline, so I have to engage 4wd to stop the slippage.
We pull into the park, find the spot, it’s large than I expected so plenty of room, on top of that it’s pretty level too, bargain!
A quick setup.
We take a walk down to the lake/dam/swamp whatever you want to call it. It’s as beautiful as I recall and so peaceful. A few people are out on their Kayaks.
We walk around the water and eventually make it over to the day use area. They kayaking company is setup, and this time they have a small caravan with them. I guess it makes sense, particularly during school holidays when tours are on every day.
Back via the track through the central rock section and we stop off at the firewood pit and grab a couple of logs each.
I have a bit of wood, so between these we get a great fire going, but it doesn’t take too long to realise the stuff here is pretty wet or at least not very well seasoned so is not burning that well, we end up using a bit extra of our own.
Dinner around the fire and during the night a possum wanders around to see if there’s any food for it… There isn’t
The stars are pretty awesome, and we spot a few small satellites, then we spot a really bight one, it must be the ISS. As the night goes on, we see quite a few that we suspect are Starlink ones.
Only about half the sites have campers in them, so it’s not quite as busy as I feared.
Liam has decided (after a bit of false start) to sleep outside in the swag, we’ve brought one of the stretchers and he’ll be under the awning, so it should be pretty comfortable.
(3.5 / 5)
