We decided to just cruise along the River Murray, and took in all the major Murray River towns (Swanhill, Echuca, Numurkah, Yarrawong, Albury etc.). My only recollection of these town were at least 38 years old, they certainly have modernised and much less sleepy now. They are all nice little towns, offering a myriad of Murray River activities, but we were only in transitory mood, so we swept through to Albury in 2 days.
More photos here
https://plus.google.com/photos/104007193885500314495/albums/5975541453377268033?banner=pwa
Our last night of camping was at a quiet small town called Numurkah, the people were especially friendly
I wanted to give Julia a surprise for the last night of the trip, so secretly, I booked us a room in one of the near 5-star hotels in Canberra, seeing that it was the weekend, we should get a very quiet night. When we got to Albury, instead of taking the Hume Hwy to race home on freeways, I turned towards the Snowy Mountain direction, Julia was livid. Cursing me all the way for not taking the short and fast way home, I kept feigning that I missed the turn, so might as well stick to it, as this way is much more picturesque, which it is. She wasn't entirely convinced.....I was given the usual silence treatment. Until..
we descended through a particularly long and steep stretch of the Alpine Way, suddenly, smoke was bellowing out from the front. Lo & behold &%$#%%!! Fortunately, it was only due to the frequent braking over 20km downhill, the heat caused the small lubricant leak ( remember that started from the Kimberleys, 11,000 Km ago) in the wheel hub to leak faster, there was oil smoke everywhere for a few minutes. I had to calm Julia down, and came clean on the reason for going through the Snowy Mountains and Canberra, I was forgiven....just !
Our last night of the trip, well what can I say...........well...good ! All was forgotten and forgiven !
On the 74th day, we cruised home from Canberra after a late morning start........
And it was the end of an epic journey.
Started as an after thought upon
returning to Australia from a month long trip to Indonesia in mid 2011,
in a moment of uncontrollable brain storming, the idea of going to
Darwin in the winter time came into focus. That's how spontaneous it was, to ended up doing a complete round trip through the middle of Australia, the Top End, Kimberleys,
and coastal Western Australia, back to Sydney on the south eastern
coast, it was most memorable if not epic, by my reckoning. But there were
immense amount of preparations once the decision was made to go, 6-7
pages of checklists were generated.
During this 74 day trip, we camped all but 3 nights, and
covered 22,578 Km, burned 4400 L of petrol, and had an epic amount of
memory and fun.
Great first blog
ReplyDeleteInteresting trip!
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