Gismo Queen and her King

Murray River - Monday 17th August

It was a beautiful sunny morning when we awoke so we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast and I decided to do a load of laundry to capitalise on the sunshine. While we waited for the machines, we farewelled our campsite neighbours, whose dog was happy to hang out with us!

We started our tour of the area with a lap of Lake Bonney, including past the caravan park where I wanted to stay but when I rang, he said they were closed?! At the top of the lake is the ruins of the old Hotel Lake Bonney, built in 1859.

It was an impressive 11 roomed building in its time, but was overtaken by the Overland Telegraph Hotel, ten kilometres downstream. We then drove out to that very quaint old building, which our campsite neighbours said they had enjoyed drinks and Sunday afternoon live music there yesterday, but it was closed today.

We then headed a bit further west before turning south and getting the ferry across the Murray at Waikerie. Here's a photo of us on the Murray, and then a view back over the river with the ferry in the middle of it.

The river has some amazing cliffs in this part of the world. It is quite breathtaking and quite different from the Barmah end of the Murray with river red gums we are familiar with.


It was then lunchtime, so we headed to Banrock Station, the winery and wetlands centre. However, by this stage it was raining so we lost enthusiasm for the wetlands walk and instead had lunch in their café, which had also been recommended by our campsite neighbours. We enjoyed that very much.

Heading back to Barmera, we stopped for afternoon tea at a café - because we needed to eat more! It was pretty good! We visited a few of the shops in Barmera and then returned to the van for a nana nap - because holidaying is so tiring! We finished listening to our audio book through the van's stereo system. As I lay on our bed in the van, by rolling my head to the right I could see the mirror like surface of the lake out one window and to the left, the sun starting to set through the old dead gum trees in the lake. Very relaxing. I then went for a walk before it got dark and collected the washing from the line which was almost dry. Being a cool night, we are inside for dinner of leftovers and a bit of TV.

posted by Tracey @ 9:27 pm