Around Australia 2014

Itinerary

Flying to Athens, Greece to board the Viking Sky to cruise the Mediterranean for 20 day on a Journey to Antiquities

First Stop is Ephesus, Turkey, then on to Heraklion, Crete, Messina, Sicily, Naples and Rome

Then we head back to Athens via Crete, Israel, Cyprus and the Greek Islands

After the cruise we’ll head to Scotland to spend 2 weeks with our daughter, then drive though England catching up with relies for 3 weeks

Then it’s off to Houston Texas to spend a few weeks with our son, his lovely wife and 2 beautiful daughters.

As we are that far around the globe we decided to complete the lap by spending a week in New Zealand before heading home

We welcome friends and family to follow along with us on this journey

Today we intended to explore Swan Hill. On the way into town we decided to call in to the one and only attraction in Lake Boga, the Catalina Museum. Did this turn out to be a surprise? After the bombing in Broome in 1942 where 16 flying boats were lost, the Australian Air Force decided to move its base for the Catalina and other flying boats. They selected Lake Boga, Victoria. The lake was large enough to land the aircraft, far enough away from any enemy aircraft and isolated enough to be able to create a secret base. The base was used by the Australian, Dutch and US air forces up until 1947 for all major repairs and even to run operations from. The museum is run by the local Lions club and there was club member giving a tour when we showed up. He was very passionate and knowledgeable about the history of the base. They have restored Catalina inside the museum and you were able to see inside it and see what a tight squeeze it was for the 10 crew in a noisy aircraft that often flew 20 hrs before refuelling. Little remains of the base today other than a number of 2 tonne blocks that were used as mooring points out in the lake. During operations the base often had over 100 aircraft either moored or being repaired at any one time. The communications bunker still remains and we had another interesting surprise. There was the usual array of old radio and telephone equipment but in addition there was a guy (geek) in his mid-twenties operating a more recent version of the HF radios used during the war. He was communicating with other geeks in various countries around the globe in Morse. He would listen to this noise and then write down what was said for the benefit of us onlookers and then reply to the message just as fast and it had come in. Apparently he has being doing Morse code for the past 12 years. I thought it was extinct in today’s radio traffic. From Lake Boga we drove into Swan Hill. The main tourist attraction was another historic village but after doing the one in Echuca and several more before that we decided to pass on this one. There wasn’t much else open so we drove out to the Murray Downs Station, this was the original sheep station in the area with once the largest river front property on the Murray River. Now it is run as a sheep stud but is not open to the public

Today we are headed for Swan Hill, another historic town on the Murray River. I had been unable to locate any free or bush camping near Swan Hill so we decided to stay in a caravan park this time. We only had 160 kms to cover today and we decided to stick to the Murray Valley Hwy and get into camp as soon as possible so we could get some washing done and leave tomorrow for exploring. I had picked a caravan park from the GPS that was just before Swan Hill on Lake Boga. When we arrived we found out that the caravan park certainly was on Lake Boga, right on the edge. In fact there was enough room for one row of sites on the lake edge, a small roadway and another row of cabins and on-site vans, then the fence and then the highway. I was a little concerned about the highway noise but the manager assured me it was pretty quiet after 10 pm. The site was grassed and right next to a large freshwater lake. There was a nice fresh breeze coming from the lake and we had most of our washing dry that afternoon. What the manager failed to mention was the regular freight trains that passed through the nearby town of Lake Boga, sounding their horns at every level crossing. The last train was at midnight and the first one at 5 am.

We stopped to have a look at the forest heritage centre but was closed despite the write up it had in all the information about the park. From there we headed into Echuca and stopped at the information centre. The information centre is built in an old pumping station that still had the original wells inside. This water was used to supply the town as well as the steam locomotives. Echuca was one of the busiest inland ports in the days of the paddle steamers. They have retained and restored many of the building from the 19^th century. A large section of the old wharf has been rebuilt and there are about 6 paddle steamers that have been restored and offer river cruises, some include and evening meal. Echuca has a Holden Museum that house the largest privately owned collection of Holden cars. There were over 40 cars including some prototype soft top convertible Commodores that never made it to the market. The highlight was the FX and HR Holden models, they even had a HR fitted with the 4.2 litre V8. Their souvenir shop had an extensive range of Holden memorabilia as well as many other car makes. From the museum we headed back to the wharf area. They have one street where all the buildings are from the 1880’s. It’s like stepping back in time, they even have a stage coach operating. We checked the paddle steamer departure times and then found a nice café for lunch. After lunch we bought tickets for the PS Canberra for our paddle steamer cruise. Although the advent of the railways killed of the most of the paddle steamer trade some of them were still working up until the 1950’s bringing logs downstream from the river gum forests to the Echuca timber mills. In the peak of the trade there were about 200 steamers working the Murray and Darling Rivers. Without the system of weirs and locks that exist today the steamers only operated during the flood or high water season. In some years of drought the paddle steamers were isolated in the deeper river pools for several years until the river started flowing again. After the river cruise we spent some time exploring the wharf museum which gave insight to what life was like in the days of paddle steamers. For the most part the steamers pulled several barges that where loaded with wool or timber. Some of the barges carried up to 200 bales of wool and it was transported from sheep stations all the way up the Darling River. Food and other goods were transported on the upstream journeys. It was a very informative and busy day. Just to make things a little more interesting on the way back to camp I switched the GPS to short mode and it gave a route that was 12 kms shorter that the route we took in the morning. Once again we headed down the back dirt roads until we came to a road closed sign. It looked like vehicles had been using it so we decided to venture on. As it turned out there were only a couple of boggy areas and we were able to get around them with little trouble and we came out on to the main road past another road closed sign.

Today we continue our journey along the Murray River. We are heading to Barmah National Park this park (70,000 acres), together with the adjoining Millewa forest (102,000 acres) in New South Wales, forms the largest River Red Gum forest in the world. Due to the recent rains and water release down the Murray many of the roads into and through the park were closed. The camp grounds were still open though but unfortunately the HEMA let us down, it insisted on taking us through numerous dirt farm roads to the back entrance of the park and when we arrived at that entrance it was closed. The GPS didn’t have an alternative entrance. We ended up going back to small town of Barwah and following a road that headed in the general direction of the campground and eventually found the campground. It turned out that the GPS didn’t have any connection from this particular road to the campground. We had one whole section of the campground to ourselves and there was plenty of firewood to get a nice warm fire going.