Gidday all,

It’s been a long eventful summer, lots of stuff happening and not a lot of time to blog. The hectic pace has slowed now so back to the blog.

We left Tassie at the start of April. With our friend from Switzerland in tow, we said our farewells to Devonport. The weather was starting to turn into autumn with rain and overcast days becoming the norm, so was a good time to leave.

 

Docking in Melbourne we wasted no time in getting out of the city and headed North West toward Ballarat.

At this stage I should mention that our numbers have swelled, as well as our Swiss friend we also have our daughter and four dogs traveling with us.

Fortunately the other six are in another car, would be a bit crowded in good old Ned otherwise.

Stopped in at Ballarat for supplies then onwards to Ararat, then a more northerly track till we came to the mallee hiway

Took us four days to get that far with Alfons (the Swiss) wondering at the vast night sky each day. He has been with us for nearly three months but a lot of that time was spent in the mountains and valleys of Tasmania, where you don’t get a big view of the sky.

We tried to tell him we weren’t even in big sky country yet.

Near Underbool we ducked up to the Pink Lakes for a look. We camped up at the border of the national park and looked after the dogs as the others went for an explore.

They came back and we stayed there the night.

He has become very good at rolling his swag, or as he would say wery goot. The swag, he says, is one of the best inventions ever.

Next day we headed up the mallee hiway on our way to Deb and the camels. Along the way are huge grain silos some of which have been painted with murals depicting rual scenes. Truly amazing artworks.

Arrived in Taplan S.A. a day later to find out the temperature for the next week was going to be around 37 degrees, so after a night catching up with Deb we said it’s good to see ya and took off to the Murray River. Spent the next week at the water’s edge having hair cuts and swimming in the middle of the days. Bit of a temperature shock after Tassie.

 

 

 

Days have cooled down now to the mid twenties so we back out with the camels and helping Deb with odd jobs that she couldn’t do on her own.