“Oh, so this comes in a series does it?” “Maybe.”

Discovering the joys of freedom camping and following on from ‘Freedom with options aplenty’. After a tentative start, one could say that we took to freedom camping with gay abandon. There’s a lot more to caravanning than Caravan Parks.

At the Bass Valley Campground near Poowong we were surrounded by tall timber and just landed young backpackers in rental cars and brand-new tents with barely a sentence of English between them. A few days later we escaped Traralgon and bushfire smoke* at Paradise Beach, camped in the dunes on the near deserted Ninety Mile Beach. In the morning we sipped coffee on the beach with a couple from Amsterdam. This was followed by an overnighter in the boat ramp carpark at moody Port Albert (yes, you did read that correctly a boat ramp car park and we were welcomed)

and on the way home the botanical garden like setting of the Franklin River Reserve.

*That fire eventually reached the open cut coal mine and took months to extinguish.

Every seasoned camper told us that we must visit Nug Nug at Myrtleford so we did, 3 times. Yes, it is that good.

On a mad dash to Lake Boga in torrential winter rain we stopped at Sebastian Trotting Track, our first racecourse. Where a kindly local dashed out in the rain to guide us to a high and dry spot. How can you repay that hospitality when there are no shops nor pub? We sat out the bad weather warm and dry watching Midsomer Murder videos and were treated to a golden sunrise and trotting horses next morning.

Heading north on our first ‘big trip’ we found Coopernook Forest near Taree and didn’t want to leave. Neither did the guy next door who was escaping a bad marriage nor the couple on the other side who were waiting for both a house to be built and her mother to kick the bucket. We never did find out which came first.

If you haven’t given freedom camping a go then give it some thought, there really are options aplenty.