Day 3 Monday 19/2/2024 Rochester, warm 32˚

The park has emptied out and it’s a peaceful morning just watching the manager on the lawnmower and ‘Steptoe & Son’ who are cleaning the site where an onsite van sat only yesterday. Woody is giving me a running commentary as ‘Son’ moves things from one pile to another and yet another – he’s a multi-handler that bloke.

Woody has a problem with his hearing aids and thinks he may have lost a tiny piece in his ear. Once more I don the head torch and magnifying glass and peer into his ear, to no avail. Then I find the tiny white dot on the floor. We drive into Specsavers Echuca and have the problem quickly fixed (our local store had given him the wrong-sized white dots). I wonder how many other people have small plastic things lodged deep within their ears…ay?

Being in Echuca is a nice chance to have a poke around the old port area. Echuca is on the Murray River and has a colourful riverboat history. There are always a few paddle steamers here taking tourists on joy rides. There’s an old wooden barge on display, which helps to demonstrate the work that those boats undertook. It’s hot today and in the trees above long-billed Corellas, the ones with the blood red under feathers on their necks, are whingeing noisily.

Alison was built in Koondrook in 1907 and weighed 60 tons. She was used to carry red gum timber.

I had found something intriguing on Google Maps that I wanted to see, so we cross the river into Moama, NSW, and take the Pericoota Road out to Deep Creek Marina Village. It turns out to be a relatively new housing estate and houseboat facility, with the obligatory pub on an offshoot creek of the Murray River. It only goes to show how much this Echuca / Moama area is expanding.

Back at camp, we chat in the shade with a neighbour. Woody cooks a prawn curry, and we eat our dinner on the camp kitchen deck in the cool breeze. Another camper drops in for a chat and tells us that on their last trip, a storm speared a tree branch through the walls of their caravan. It was an insurance write off and they now have a shiny new van.

Accom: $42.00

Fuel: $76.65