Day 4 Wednesday 18/12/2024 Tooleybuc to Euston 30◦

I’m always amused at the names of the places around us and today it’s Wee Wee Rup, Goodnight and Bumbang Island.

By the time we turned out the lights last night there were about 10 campers here. With only a short drive ahead we take the morning slowly. As we leave town the primary school kids are in the park playing mini golf and the older ones are on the flying fox.

The scenery today is nut orchards. We pass Cobram Estate olive grove and there are citrus orchards, of course. We stop at Boundary Bend where the river makes a sweeping turn. It’s quite breezy and the corellas are having a great time swooping and chattering.

The check in time at Euston is midday, so we pull into a car wash to get some of the dust off while we wait. You can’t have this much agriculture without workers and Robinvale is known for its multicultural population*. The town is neat and tidy with several large Asian grocery stores and a central grassy square Caix Park in honour of its sister town Villers Bretonneux. We pick up a loaf of bread at the bakery and cross the river into NSW again. This time to Robinvale’s twin, Euston which is little more than a residential suburb. But it does have the Euston Club. For international readers, the state of New South Wales really knows how to ‘do’ clubs. When poker machines were illegal in Victoria the border town clubs boomed providing ‘pokies tours’ for gambling starved southerners.

The Euston Club has a river frontage, and they’ve also provided for us nomads with several acres of green lawn, power and water. There’s a community area comprising of both indoor and outdoor camp kitchens, a free laundry, toilets, showers, a herb and vegetable garden, and for the cooler months a firepit and wood. I can’t think of anything else we’d need other than a good book and that’s what a warm sunny day calls for. Our camp hosts are a charming couple who’ve just arrived back from their weekly shopping trip to Mildura. We’re so impressed we decide on two nights.

Woody walks into town, it’s too warm for me but perfect for lazing about and talking to the horse over the fence.

Dinner is air fried chicken and a salad and it’s another of those nights where it’s almost too hot to eat. I wonder how many hot days there are to the kilo as I’d like to drop at least two (kg).

Accom: $30.00 (power) we hear later that it’s cheaper if you spend a couple of bucks to take out a membership, but we’re not complaining it is excellent. Towing Kms: 100Kms

*I look up the population stats for the area and Robinvale is listed as having 3,740 residents and Euston 822. There’s a large indigenous population and 45 different nationalities. But it is amusing to see that water and shopping statistics show that the population could be more than double the census. Whoops!