Mildura, Vic to Swan Reach, SA

From Mildura we decided to head downstream along the Murray River, stopping off here and there to camp. There are some really lovely spots at the moment with the river running so well. We fulfilled a long-term desire to go out to Ned’s Corner and camp. It was beautifully peaceful, even though other people were camped 500m further downstream. They just fished from bank nice and quiet!! About half way through the afternoon though, we heard a roaring noise coming from upstream. Eventually a pair of powered tinnies came hurtling through – followed by another two – and another two – and another two!!! Eventually about 12 boats came through – in pairs – all going flat out! And we still don’t know what it was all about???

After Ned’s Corner, we stopped at the Berri Riverside Tourist Park (Top Tourist). We caught up with fellow Kedron owners Derrick and Marilyn again (Derrick was also a Junior Recruit), so had been at the reunion in Mildura. They are heading across to WA, hoping to spend Christmas in Albany. We took a drive across to Barmera to attend the Sunday morning market. When we arrived and parked the car, a very large huntsman spider decided the time was ripe to wander down from the roof of the car and across the doors which were just in the process of being opened to let us out. You’ve never seen four people move so fast. It was like a scene from Keystone Cops –Marilyn and I levitated about 100 metres down the road, leaving Rick and Derrick (who had also levitated, just not as far) to deal with the monster. Our last sight of it was (we think) heading under one of the wheels to hide. Hmmmm!! There is only one thing wrong with finding a large spider – and that is losing it again!!! After extracting a promise from the guys that they would examine the car VERY closely before we got back in we headed on towards the market. Wasn’t too bad, but a lot of the goods were pretty expensive. Still, we wandered around for a little while and then headed back towards Berri.

On the way in to Berri, we stopped at the new Vietnam Veterans’ War Memorial. It’s situated at the end of the main street – overlooking the river. It is a very well thought out memorial and covers ALL post WWII “conflicts”, including Korea, the Indonesian Confrontation and all peace-keeping duties. It also covers all three arms of the Australian Defence Service.

After three pleasant, and rather warm days we headed off down-river again. The plan was to stop at Punyelroo Caravan Park, near to Swan Reach. We knew the place from many years ago when it was just a collection of fishing cabins on the river. Very old friends of ours – Fay and Brian – used to own one of the prperties, which they called Punyelrosa. We had a lot of fun up on the river, but sadly have not seen Fay or Brian for a long time. Fay is actually Rick’s ex-sister in law, but that is a story for another time, preferably around a camp-fire.

Unfortunately, Punyelroo Caravan Park now looks like a complete dump. We did a complete circuit of the place and nobody showed any sign of interest or enquiry. Long story short, we headed for Nuriootpa instead.