23rd - 29th March

Well, we finally got the caravan back! Yay! We went and picked it up on Friday and brought it back to the place we have the housboat docked up river from Berri. Ross has a few jobs to do on it before we get underway again and we have to reorganise it - again.

We had a great week as usual, never running out of things to do. We have caught a few big carp and we usually take them up onto the bank and chop them up to make sure they are dead and so the kites can pick them over. One morning when I got up to do my work I actually saw the kites picking at the fish just about 2o feet from me and I got some footage of it too - pretty awesome!

We have some more visitors who arrived yesterday - Judi and Reg who we have known since I was a little tyke and I used to babysit their two girls.

16th - 22nd March

Well, another exciting week on the houseboat and another week gone by without us getting the caravan back. We have spoken to both the insurance company and the people who are fixing it and it looks like it will be another week before we get it back so mum and dad will have to put up with us for another week!

It has been an interesting week with lots of swimming, fishing, cycling, exploring in the tinny, happy hours and taking in gorgous sunsets.

The weather has been extremely variable. It has mostly been hot and sunny and beautiful weather for swimming, but we have had days where it is really windy all day, only for it to calm down to a beautiful, calm night where we go up on the top deck to play cards and watch the sun go down and for it to be hot enough that you can hardly get to sleep at night, only for it to come up with a huge wind storm in the middle of the night and turn cold enough for you to want to snuggle under all the blankets you can find. The good thing about that particular spot though (Booky Creek) was that it was the best fishing we have had the whole time we have been on board. It seems unbeliveable but we have hardly caught a fish the entire time we have been on board (can't even lose a bait). We caught a great big yellowbelly as well as some huge carp. We cut the carp up and leave it on the bank for the kites to eat.

This morning I had a bit of a nasty surprise when I got up early to do my usual work only to find out that the internet woudn't work. After playing around with it a bit for awhile I decided to get Ross out of bed who had hardly slept a wink because of the storm and he played around with it for awhile and couldn't get it going either. We had just moved to a new spot from the night before so we hopped on our bikes and went back to the spot we had been the night before where the internet had been working fine to see if it was the phone or the Telstra that was playing up and it turned out it was the phone - bumma! We were out in the middle of nowhere so there wasn't much we could do about it at that stage so we just got underway when we could and decided to head into Berri. Ross and I took off in the tinny and went into town but being a small country town and it being a Sunday, there wasn't much we could do about the phone so we decided to go to the pub where we were going to moor outside of and see if we could organise some wireless internet. As we were heading to the pub we noticed mum and dad coming in so Ross ran down to help tie it up while I went to the pub to find out about the internet. Ross got to the boat and mum and dad threw him the rope and as he was tying it up his foot slipped and he went over the pier and straight into the water - phone, wallet, GPS and all! If the phone wasn't broken before I reckon it will be now! Luckily the GPS was waterproof and the wallet - well it will dry out!

9th - 15th March

Well, we have had a lovely week on the houseboat. We have swum heaps in the river, fished (no bloody fish here), played cards, puttered around to different camp sites, etc, etc.

Ross went into town with dad in the tinny and they came back with a brand new pushbike for me that they had bought from a place that was closing down for $30.00 and apparently it was worth about $200.00+. It had been written off because there was a bit of a bend on one of the back frame bits but the boys reckon they can fix it!

WE have spent lots of time wandering around Renmark and Berri and went to lunch with Bob, Marian, Melva and Tom at a lovely little pub on the riverbank that overlooked a beautiful area where there were hundreds of black swans camped out.

Ross and I slept on the roof of the houseboat one night - it was just lovely. We were going to do it again the following night but it came up all windy and cold so we moved downstairs again.

WE have only caught one yellowbelly worth keeping which jumped on the line at 2am one morning. I heard the bell going off and got Ross up and we brought it in and decided to keep it but remembered dad telling us you needed to kill and gut them straight away for some reason. We couldn't find a thing in the dark but managed to get the job done eventually and found out in the morning that dad had a net we could have put him in overnight that would have kept him alive until the morning and we could have done it then rather than in the middle of the night! Oh well, we will know next time.

Bob and Marian left during the week to head home and Tom and Melva left this morning (Sunday) so it is back to just us four again. Mum and I play Sudoko on a big board sometimes and we play cards and generally keep ourselves occupied.

We still don't have the caravan back and it won't be until sometime next week now obviously - hopefully it won't take too much longer!

2nd - 8th March 2009

Monday 2nd

There are a whole bunch of juvenile white cockatoos here (they don't have their crests yet) and they get up to all kinds of shenanagens. They are pretty funny to watch - they are also quite noisy! We got the boat off the roof for the first time this trip to take a little fishing trip. We didn't really expect to catch anything because we really don't have the right bait, etc to catch anything but we thought it would be fun to try anyway - guess what!!?? We didn't catch anything :). Never mind. It was a lovely boat trip around the lake, there is a lovely cool breeze out there and it was an interesting ride. As I said, the birdlife is so abundant, but the lake makes for an eerie landscape with all the dead trees sticking up out of the water, it's quite a bizarre site.

Tuesday 3rd

The weather turned a bit lousy over night - quite windy and a few speck of rain. This is a really dusty place and dust is getting in everywhere! We decided to move on and see what other places we could find that might not be quite so dusty.

We said goodbye to our new friends Laurie and his wife Merle from Sorrento and Laurie's brother Pat and his wife Margery from Kialla (Shepparton). We got on really well with them and it would have been nicer if we had more time to spend some more time there with them but we need to get to Renmark within the week and there is a lot to see and do between here and there.

We drove towards Echuca looking for a new campsite. The weather had settled down a little and we went into Christie's Beach (Camps 4) to have a look around. It is a great spot and it has toilets but it was still early so we decided to keep on going. We eventually pulled up at Echuca and were going to camp opposite where the Paddle Boats pull up for the night but when we were sitting down eating our fish and chips that we got from a little takeaway store boasting "Best Fish and Chips in Town" (hate to think what the worst were like!), a guy walking his dog came up and said hello with his dog "Timmy", a lovely labrador X that Boris actually got on with, and told us about a spot at the boat ramp where there is an off-leash area for the dogs to run in and you could go swimming there too. We were pretty hot and bothered and dusty by then and were definitely due for a swim so we headed down there. It is a great big area with signs up saying "No Camping" but there was another caravan there so we stopped and chatted to the guy and he told us that he has camped there before and had no problems - you just don't put your annexe out so it doesn't look like you are camping. We went for a well-earned swim and then settled down for the night, only to have the wind come up pretty hard again and we were parked under some trees so Ross got out and moved us out into the open so we didn't get hit by any falling branches.

Wednesday 4th

It was 6 am (still pitch black) when all these cars started turning up out of nowhere and the people were making a whole lot of ruckus. They weren't making the kind of noises that drunk people make so that made us feel better but we were thinking to ourselves "what on earth are all these people doing her in the middle of the night?" (well 6 am IS pretty early!). We listened to what they were saying and found out that they were "Bootcampers" here to do their morning exercise! There were about 20 cars so it was no small group. They eventually moved off and we went back to sleep only to have some great big noisy machine pull up near us and start shredding tree limbs that had fallen on the ground! We gave up after that and got out of bed.

We had planned that I would work and Ross would go and look at the Holden Museum and find out whether there was anything else worthwhile looking at while we were here. We decided to move the van into the sun to get solar and I noticed the wheels on the caravan making strange noises so I told Ross. He decided it was the bearings so he got down and dirty and pulled the wheel off while I worked. Unfortunately he dropped the bearing in the dirt and couldn't find any grease to clean it with so had to walk into town to buy some. By the time he got back and finished putting the wheel on I had finished my work so we got underway. A couple of the locals (including the council guys) came over to see if they could give us a hand but Ross had it all under control.

Before we left Echuca we decided to have a wander around the Port area, which is great, a bunch of old buildings in a type of arcade with a blacksmith and a woodturner, etc. The thing we found great about Echuca was that all the buildings with any historical significance have plaques on them explaining their history, so it is really nice just wandering around reading all the plaques on all of the old buildings.

Ross decided to go and see the National Holden Museum before we left too, which I wasn't really all that interested in so I stayed in the caravan and read a book and babysat Boris.

We have been driving through dust storms for the past couple of days - it has been very windy with big gusts of wind and there are great clouds of red dust that cover half the horizon - it is quite an awesome site - it kind of looks like smoke haze but it is red.

We got underway eventually and stopped at Lake Boga, a rather unfortunate little town that was obviously once quite a prosperous place located on a lake but there is no lake any more. I found this article that might explain what happened there better:

Lake Boga was once famous for fishing, swimming, yachting, and speed boat racing. But due to the ongoing drought and reduced water allocations, the lake is now dry.
Over 500 people live in the township by the lake, and many of them work in industries that rely on tourism related revenue.
But during last summer the lake dried up, and misfortune of biblical proportions seemed to descend on the town.
Around 10,000 fish died and the smell of rotting fish soon covered the town. Gnats also infested the area and the local tourism industry was severely affected.
Now winter is almost over, but the lake is still completely dry.
Locals say they have even seen cars being driven across the cracked lake bed. This would have been unimaginable when the Lake Boga Yacht Club was created in 1936, but now the yacht club seems like a symbol of more prosperous times.

It was pretty tragic. Anyway, just before we were about to hop in the van and keep going Ross noticed that the top was up on the caravan, which of course it shouldn't be! We went inside to investigate and found that all the straps that hold the pop top down had busted! Apparently one of those big gusts of winds I was talking about had gotten hold of the roof and ripped all the straps off and we had been driving with the roof up! Needless to say that is not a good thing! We managed to get the roof down although it was a little skewiff and Ross rigged up some more straps to hold it down until we got into Swan Hill to try and get some help. We were about 10 kms out of Swan Hill. About 5 km on the top popped up again! We got it down again and kept driving until we reached Swan Hill at about 6:30 pm. Obviously it was too late to get anything done at that stage so we camped overnight and are going to take it to the caravan repair place in the morning.

Thursday 5th

We woke up in the morning and were in the process of having breakfast when a friendly local came past with his dog. Knowing what Boris is like we put him in the caravan but "Trev" the friendly local said his dog would be fine with Boris so we let him out. They didn't eat each other which was quite surprising! We gave Trev a cuppa and had a chat and then headed off to get our caravan looked at.

The guy had a bit of a look at it and reckoned it would be a write off - all the cross bars that hold the roof up are bent and it has bent the roof too and it doesn't close properly. If it was going to be written off we would have to wait for an inspector to come and look at it and apparently that would take about a week and we didn't want to take that long so we rang the NRMA who we are insured with and told them we would take it on to Mildura which is a bigger town and closer to where are are supposed to meet mum and dad. Apparently I also have some cousins who live near Mildura who might be able to help us out.

The next problem was how to keep the roof from flying up again before we reached our destination so Ross solved that problem by buying a big red strap and strapping it around the whole caravan! It looks like it has a big red ribbon around it!

We rang mum and dad to let them know what had happened and mum seemed to think it was pretty hilarious for some reason and had to pick herself up off the floor after she finished laughing about the big red ribbon. Ross’ mum was a little more suitably concerned. In my mums defence she knew we were okay before she started laughing.

We got to Mildura with no further problems and went and saw the caravan guy. He reckons it is fixable and told us to bring it back next week. So it looks like we will be staying in Mildura for a couple of days. Mum told us to go and visit my cousin who I have never met who lives close to Mildura so I rang him and we will go there tomorrow for a visit. We had a bit of a look around and a swim in the Murray River before settling down for the night in a little carpark at the back of some place called "Pots and Foundtains" or something like that. There are toilets in the park and it is not far from the river.

Friday 6th

I worked to 11 am and then we went to Red Cliffs to have a look at "Big Lizzie", which was an enormous tractor used to clear vast expanses of land around the river at the Red Cliffs soldier settlement. It was the biggest tractor ever made with a top speed of just two miles an hour and weighed 60 tonnes. It was huge!! Quite interesting to go and have a look at.

We worked out that Monday is a public holiday here so we won't be able to drop the caravan off until Tuesday so we went back to the guy and asked if we could drop it off earlier and he eventually gave in and will let us drop it off in the morning instead of Tuesday so we will meet up with mum and dad tomorrow afternoon on the houseboat in Lyrup where they moor it.

After that we did a little shopping and then headed off to see my previously never met cousin - Graham and his wife Margaret who live at Pomona. Pomona doesn't exist on our GPS so we had to get there the old fashioned way - fancy that!! They have a lovely 10 acres right in the middle of acres of grapevines. The country around there is very hostile and barren, but they have spent a lot of time planting heaps of native trees, etc to make their block lovely and green. There is still a lot of work to be done but they are doing a great job. They also grow all their own vegies and they do "Scrap Metal Art". The go to scrap metal yards and old farms, etc and gather up all sorts of scrap metal and then turn it into all sorts of weird and wonderful things. They are so talented and they have a wonderful imagination - it's amazing what they can make! We had dinner with them and got to know them and we reckon they are just wonderful people.

Saturday 7th

We took off in the morning and headed for Lyrup and got there about 2 pm. We spent the afternoon unpacking the 4WD, fishing (no fish in this damn river) - we were trying out our new lures but dad has had the lines in the water with fresh shrimp on them for a couple of days and hasn't even had a bite. We went for a swim and then played cards with mum, dad, Bob and Marian (firends of mum and dad's who have been visiting them on the houseboat for a couple of weeks.

When we were swimming mum was just getting in the water and had the "noodle" (long, thin floaty thing) in between her legs and she was on the swim ladder and Boris was on the swim deck. As she was climbing down the ladder the noodle got enticingly close to Boris so he said thank you very much and grabbed it thinking it was being offered to him as a play toy. He was very offended when we had to wrestle him to the ground to get it off of him before he destroyed it! Mum couldn't work out why I was laughing so hard when I saw the whole thing unfolding.

Boris just looooooves the housboat, he spends most of his time in the water when he can. We throw the ball off of the back and he jumps in off the swim deck, grabs the ball then climbs back up the swim ladder ready to go again.

Sunday 8th

I worked till lunchtime and then we got the boat out and we all had goes on the inflatable tube that gets towed behind the boat - it was great fun!! Dad was the only one who managed to fall off and that was only because he was trying to show off! While we were trying to get dad back on the tube, we were about 300 m away from the bank and both Ross and I were in the boat which Boris was not happy with. Unbeknowns to us in the boat, when he saw us stopped, Boris decided it was a good time to try and join us and started swimming out to the boat! He got about half way out there by the time dad got back on the tube and we took off again (we still didn't know he was out there). Poor old Boris was left in the middle of the river all by himself and didnt know what to do!! He eventually decided to go back to the boat but he certainly had a great swim!

We played cards and then finished off the afternoon with another swim, happy hour and more cards.