Hi everybody..Happy Easter.  Hope the easter Bunny came to everybody. Here we are again with a continuation of our travels.

We left Swan Hill and headed for Murrabit.  Where? I hear you ask.  Well it is supposed to be the biggest country market in Australia.  Other stallholders that we had met told us that it was a really busy market and that there was camping there and that a lot of the traders went down there on a Friday night before the Saturday market.  So we set out to go there on Thursday.  The showground camping was actually camping in the bush.  The security lighting didn’t work, the toilet doors didn’t close, the lights didn’t work in there either and there wasn’t another soul for miles.  We spent Thursday night there and thought everyone else would turn up on the Friday.  By 3.00pm on the Friday we were still alone and went for a drive into Murrabit to look at the sights.  These are the highlights…the church, the mailbox at the end of the driveway and Murrabit’s claim to fame, the first metal bridge across the Murray.

We then discovered that some traders had turned up at the market but they all just parked their trucks at the marketplace and spent the night there.  So we had another night in the bush by ourselves.  Surprisingly, we slept well and had no problems at all.   The market was really disappointing though, spread over a huge area, no atmosphere at all and dust, dust and more dust.  We were not impressed and had a pretty ordinary day.

That afternoon we decided to head back to Echuca/Moama as there was a market in Echuca the next day.  We booked into A Shady River caravan park which was very nice and proceeded to try and rid the van of the dust that we had accumulated over the past few days.  We took down curtains, we washed out cupboards, all the fun stuff.

The Echuca market was very small but we did ok.  Nothing to set the world on fire , just ok.  On Monday, we were checking out the markets for the following weekend and decided that we would stay put and do the Girgarre, Moama and Echuca markets the following Saturday, Sunday and Monday as it was a long weekend.   As you can see from the last picture, this cowboy hat phenomena is spreading

When we went to book into the caravan park for another week we discovered that they were fully booked out for the long weekend so we had to move parks.  We ended up in a very strange caravan park indeed.  Really it was the size of a town in it’s own right.  All cabins everywhere and really not much in the way of facilities for vans.  Just pull up round the bbq they said and plug yourselves in.  Take as much room as you need.  For the first few days in was lovely a;though very dry.  The cabins on the riverfront were made to look like an old town.  This was the view from the front porch of the cabins.  It was getting hotter by the day and was now in the high 30’s and still rising.  The pool was a godsend.  Everything changed on the Friday, people were arriving from everywhere and the once quiet park became like a city.  Cars everywhere throwing up dust from the unmade roads throughout the park.  The mercury was still rising, the dust was getting worse and there were noisy children everywhere.  We did the three markets but couldn’t wait to get out of there and move on.

Janet, this winery was right next door, I tried to convince them I was a long lost relative and should be invited to try all the Morrisons wines but they weren’t very receptive to the idea.

We had to go somewhere cooler, it really was becoming pretty unbearable.  We hadn’t had much in the way of wildlife here on the Murray since our ducks in the first park but the night before we left Motley1 made friends with this critter and shared his dinner with him.

The next morning we set off for Wagga Wagga, again it was very hot and the airconditioning in the car was working overtime.  We passed through Deniliquin, where we stopped for lunch at the RSL, then Jerilderie, made famous by Ned Kelly.  passed through Blighty and stopped at the pub ( well it was hot folks).  We weren’t too far out of Wagga Wagga when we came upon a dust storm and of course everything was again covered in fine fine dust.  Here we are atWagga, the colour of the sky was caused by the dust storm which was followed by a dry electrical storm.  We didn’t unhitch here as we intended to leave early the next morning as they were also experiencing high temperatures and it had in fact been 43 degrees that day.

We headed for the Southern Highlands and booked into Mittagong Caravan Park.  It was like being in another country, everything was so green and the nights were decidedly cool.  We did Mittagong market on Saturday and I had a wonderful surprise.  I met a friend I hadn’t seen for about fifteen years.  We spent a couple of hours catching up and she told us that the Kiama market was very good and that it was on the following day.  It meant a very early start but nonetheless, we headed off to the market.  It couldn’t get much different than the terrain along the Murray.  These pictures show how green the grass was, the palm trees and what a pleasant, if somewhat large market it was.

It was now the week leading up to the Easter weekend and we couldn’t decide where to head to next as a lot of the parks were fully booked and site fees rocket for these holidays.  We thought we might be able to free camp in our usual Sydney Park and we were right, got in no problems at all.

Whilst here, we have carried out some cosmetic surgery on the van.  painted the outside, cleaned the skirt, laid some new tiles on the floor and of course cleaned from top to toe to rid ourselves of all the dust.  I have yet to take some pictures of the van but will do that soon and post some before and after shots.  Chill laid the new flooring and made a really good job of it.  Motley1 did the painting although he did let me hold the paintbrush for 5 minutes

We are just getting ready to head off once again .your guess is as good as mine as to where to.  This time we will just hitch up the van, get in the car and see where we end up.

Until next time.