Day 5 Thursday 19/10/2023 Heyfield, quite warm 6 – 25

It’s a delightful sunny morning which makes sitting outside under the shade of the awning with a coffee in hand a real treat.

Missus Toothless and I fiddle with their Landcruiser’s ‘Add On’ navigation unit, while the rest of our mob go up to check out the Paradise Valley campground. We then take a drive through dairying country again, this time to Briagalong to see the Quarry Reserve. It doesn’t tick our boxes though. I think we were spoiled yesterday with Paradise Valley. We would really like to see Blue Pool reserve too, but it is currently closed, probably because of the floods.

We have a spirited Happy Hour before walking up to the Railway Hotel for dinner. There’s a 45-minute delay on our meals as the kitchen crew are cooking for the firefighters who are still battling the bushfires that started before the floods. You read that correctly, even torrential rain can’t put these fires out. Dinner is pretty good and I can vouch for the flake (shark) which is delicious, though the service is a bit flakey.

Walking back to camp it’s a warm evening with streaks of red across the sky. “Red sky at night shepherd’s delight” as they say.

Our TV aerial has given up the ghost completely and strangely we’ve discovered that we can get one channel if we leave the bedroom blind open.

Now I must mention that last night we had a young German cyclist ride in. He’s doing the Big Lap of Australia by bike and pitched his tent ever so close to our mate Mother of Pearl. When she happily volunteered to look after him for the night she quickly earned herself the name ‘Cougar’.

Accom: $10.00 (all donations go to the building of a toilet block in the wetlands.