Swan Hill & Robinvale

There is no direct route from Warnambool to Swan Hill, a distance of around 400kms. I decided to let technology do the job, and got out the Navman and entered Swan Hill. We were off, blindly following directions. How amazing is this technology. You just follow that worm!! We had expected a late departure due to our caravan repair, but were pleasantly surprised to be on the road before lunch. The rain was teeming down, as we worked our way north, and it did not stop, just altering from steady to torrential. Our plan was to stop overnight along the way to Swan Hill, but with the incessant rain, we just pressed on, as the weather checks kept saying that the further north we got, the less rain we would find, and that Swan Hill was fine and warm!

Mr & Mrs Hay Bale!

The route was taking us through parts of Victoria we have never been before! We came into Lake Bolac, where we were devastated to find out we would miss the Annual Eel Festival by a couple of weeks!! Sounds like a real hoot!! Must be booked out months in advance!! How in God's name can there be an Eel Festival!!! We passed by Ararat and Stawell, two places we have visited and enjoyed, and even came upon a tiny village called Paradise, a misnomer for sure! When we reached St.Arnaud and stopped for fuel, we thought it looked a nice little town and the caravan park looked good, but it was still raining, so we decided to push on to Swan Hill and hope the weatherman was right! We called ahead, and arranged for arrival a day early, and pulled into the caravan park at 5.45pm. It was a balmy 28 degrees and fine!!

Lazy Time in Swan Hill.

The Big Murray Cod.

Our spot in the caravan park was lovely. An elevated site that looked down to the river. It would be a lovely spot to spend a week. It is very close to town as well. This was our first time staying in Swan Hill, which is a lovely town of around 16,000 people, so it has all the services you could want. It is a rich agricultural area, supporting a dairy industry, fruit trees, mostly stone fruit, and further afield are the vast grain farms of the Mallee Country. Three years back whilst at Carnarvon Gorge, we had met Carol & Neville Smith, who had a dairy farm near Swan Hill. We had kept in touch and let them know we would be in town, and looked forward to seeing them again. In addition, it was a holiday weekend in Victoria, and there was lots to do, including the Annual Food & Wine Festival.

With Carol & Neville

Wharf precinct.

It was lovely to see Carol & Neville again. They made us feel so at home! We caught up with them over a happy hour, and learned that they no longer dairyed, but had beef cattle. They want to enjoy a semi retirement, and do some caravan trips. We caught up on all their family news, visited their farm for a lovely lunch, and they showed us around town and the surrounding region. There farm is at Tyntynder, about 15kms from town. The thing that was evident as we drove around the countryside was just how dry it was. The area is in drought, and only surviving because of the irrigation water from the Murray River. The whole issue of irrigation and water allocation is an ongoing issue all along the Murray, with three states all having different views and ways in which water is allocated. It is a complex issue, but as an outsider, it did look like the Murray was healthy, with plenty of water in it.

Paddle Steamer PYAP.

Happy hour in Swan Hill.

Happy hour by the river each night was really lovely. For the holiday weekend, the caravan park was full, and there were people partying, kayaking up the river, and generally having fun. The BBQ's were running hot. God knows how many snags were consumed in the caravan park this weekend!. Each evening the paddle steamer Pyap would come past and scare the hell out of everyone with its loud whistle, and the trees would fill with 1000's of corellas squawking and flying around like kamikazis. It is wonderful times like this, that we realise how great and varied our life is, with a different backyard and different neighbours almost every week.

Tasting glass in hand.

Saturday we headed up to the Pioneer Settlement, just along the river from the caravan park, and venue for the Food & Wine Festival. Even with nothing on, it is a fantastic venue to visit with its recreated pioneer village full of old shops, machinery and cars, and the waterfront region where the river cruise departs most days. We have seen a few of these such venues, and this is one of the best! We paid our entry fee, got our tasting glass and lanyard, and headed off to the stalls. There were wines and food to taste aplenty, and we did our best to try most!! We walked in and out of the old shops and relived a past era, much of which we could remember!! It was a great few hours, but by mid afternoon the wine tasting was taking its toll and it was time to head back for a siesta!! The rest of the weekend we were wonderfully entertained by Carol & Neville, during which time I discovered a wonderful golf resort and country club called Murray Downs, so we stopped in for an afternoon drink, and I booked myself into the Tuesday Men's Competition. Neville is a passionate Bowler, and he was playing Pennants bowls on Tuesday & Wednesday.

Yummy!!

Carol & Neville at home.

While I went off to golf, Carolyn acquainted herself with the shops of Swan Hill, and she assures me they were surprisingly good. My golf day was a beauty. I was put with three local guys, two Johns and a Sam, so names weren't hard to remember. They were great fun to be with. I shared a ride in John Tripodi's cart. Now John is a good golfer, and also happens to own one of the best restaurants in town! God knows these things!! The restaurant has been his families passion for 30 years, with John running it for quite a few years. Called Quo Vadis, it serves high quality Italian food, as we found out that evening when I surprised Carolyn with dinner there. John really spoiled us, and we had a fantastic evening sharing wonderful garlic prawns, a top notch spaghetti marinara, the fish of the day, and at John's insistence, finished off with a home made fresh nectarine semi fredi which was unbelievably good! To finish off the night John joined us for Limoncello and espresso! One of those special nights. Oh, and the golf course was excellent as well, where I was happy to sign for 33 points on a difficult, but wonderfully presented, championship golf course. My host had 34 points.

Morning Tea with Carol & Ella.

A Ferry across the Murray.

The next day we helped Carol look after her Granddaughter Ella. We headed down to the Spoons Café on the river for a delicious morning tea. It is a great venue with a big shady deck out over the river. From there we headed over to Lake Boga, where Neville was playing his Pennants Bowls. Carol also showed us around this huge lake, which we had seen before. You might remember us telling you a number of years ago about the lake where the WW11 Catalina Flying Boats were serviced, far away from the war zone. well, that was Lake Boga. It is home to both of Carol & Neville's daughters, and just a short drive from Swan Hill. It was fun watching Neville bowl, and he assured us we were not putting the pressure on him!!! That night, we all headed out to The Federal Hotel for a farewell dinner, which was very good. It had been a lovely time catching up with Carol & Neville.

Nuts everywhere.

Next morning we packed up in the rain!!! Hasn't bloody well rained in Swan Hill for months!! It was mostly a storm, and gone by 9.30am. Didn't do much more than settle the dust, which was a blessing as it was blowing like mad. We weren't in a hurry as we were only heading 86kms down the river to Robinvale. It was a tough ride in the gale force winds. A truckie going the opposite way was pointing furiously at us, so we pulled in to find that our awning had started to unravel!! The wind was so strong that we had to find a place to turn around so the awning would be protected from the wind as we had to pull it out and retract it again. When we did this I noticed that there was a lot of play in the roller, so deduced that the spring had lost tension, so worked out a way to strap the awning down. We literally limped our way to Robinvale. We were getting our van serviced in Mildura next week, so this would be an extra item on the list! Along the way we passed an interesting plantation, which stood out among the fruit trees and endless grape vines. It was The Australian Cricket Bat Willow Project, a huge paddock full of slender, tall willow trees! Not sure at what stage the project is, but the trees looked pretty mature!!

A great spot.

Relaxing by the Murray.

Robinvale sits on a lovely section of The Murray River. It is wide and quite deep with Weir No.15 just down stream at Euston. We had stopped at the Riverside Caravan Park for one night 3 years back, and vowed to come back, as the sites back right onto the river, and the park managers keep it pretty lush and green all year round. There isn't a lot to do in Robinvale, but it is a fantastic spot to kick back and relax, throw a line into the river, read a book, or just snooze. The balmy weather was just perfect. Across the river in NSW is the smaller town of Euston, which boasts a fantastic club, called Euston Club Resort. On our last night we had the courtesy bus pick us up, and we had a great meal in the Bistro. The place was packed and it was Monday Night!! There are a lot of fruit pickers in town, and many of these are Asian. The gaming room was also packed!! The other nationality that surprised us as to how many were in the district was pacific Islanders. We have not seen many in rural areas, but this area has heaps of them.

Robinvale also has a very strong ANZAC connection. It is a sister town to Villers-Bretonneux, and the name Robinvale, honors the death of Lieutenant George Robin Cuttle MC, a local identity killed at Caix near Villers-Bretonneux in 1918. Today, the region produces vast quantities of nuts, almonds, walnuts & pistachios, as well as table grapes, stone fruits, and citrus. It is quite a sight to drive for miles, surrounded by such heavy cultivation, spreading out in every direction, as far as the eye can see. At the moment it appears that grapes are being removed in favour of nuts, as there are lots of new plantings of walnuts, and lots of dead looking vines!

Murrumbidgee meets the Murray.

Nearby, at the small village of Boundary Bend is the point where the two great rivers, The Murray & Murrumbidgee, meet. We took a drive out to see what we thought would be a major tourist attraction. It sure sounded like it in the book!! It took us some time to find the well hidden sign, and then at a fork in the track, we just took a lucky guess!! The track is pretty well 4WD only, and we didn't see a soul until we found the sign heralding the junction of the rivers. While taking a couple of photos, and old guy and his dog walked up to us, saying how glad he was to see us!! He introduced himself as Ron, and told us he was camping a short way along the river, fishing for Murray Cod, and had managed to bog his ute in the sand along the river bank. He just could not get it out. He said he had waited all the previous day for someone to come along, and had now started to walk the 7 or 8 kms out to the highway, when we came along!! Lucky for him, and lucky I had my snatch strap in the back!! We quickly had him hooked up and dragged out of the sand and onto solid ground. A little bit of adventure in the bush!!

Dragging out Ron!

Track to Murrumbidgee Junction.

Sunday we walked up to town and were lucky to get a Sunday paper. Nothing was open except the IGA Supermarket. There were a few people standing around, and they told us they were waiting for the bike riders to come through town. Apparently there was a Black Dog Ride, a charity to aid depression. We have seen a number of these rides along our travels. This lot were terribly disorganized. One young guy stopped his bike near us and proclaimed that some riders had taken a wrong turn and headed off to Euston, whilst another group of speedsters had gone so fast no one wanted to try and keep up!! They were straggling through town in dribs and drabs as we headed back to the caravan park. It was another beautiful day to do nothing!!

Tuesday morning we slowly packed up to head into Mildura for Easter. The caravan park was pretty quiet now, but we were assured that the ski boat crowd would arrive in huge numbers for the holiday weekend. If the photos in the office were anything to go by, this idyllic spot would soon be wall to wall ski boats!!