Day 4 27/03/2011 We made it to South Australia

Day 4 – 27/3/2011

We woke to a fabulous morning beside the lake, Zac was off early to catch carp with Claudia and Callum happy to lie in bed and read…..aahh holidays!!. 

After a slow breakfast Pete settled down to mend the flat bike tyres, this was a slow job and my we were both surprised by how many burs were in each tyre, the kids though were very happy as they could once again hoon around and do skids in the dirt.

It was going well for a coffee break when Pete was giving the pajero the once over and oops he found a piece of steel sticking out of back left tyre, lucky he had already had tyre changing experience this morning and how much harder could a 4wd wheel be???  Pete went off mumbling something about women…..and naivety!!

With all tyres changed we headed off to Mildura wondering if we would find a tyre shop open.  The kids settled back and travelled well.

Across the NSW/Vic boarder we sped and lunch in Mildura was beside the Great Murray River, trying to explain the significance of the Murray to the kids was fun, they seemed more interested in watching the house boats and playing in the park…so much for a life education.

We headed off after unsuccessfully looking for a tyre shop, oh well maybe in the next town, maybe not on a Sunday.  Mildura to Renmark, the most uneventful drive so far – even flatter than the Hay Plains!!  Even I ran out of things to look at. 

We stopped at the SA/VIC border going through the quarantine station, just when I thought I had nothing to declare, the lady checked the van taking with her the onions, garlic and cucumber!!  She graciously gave me a quarantine book to help us with all the other borders.

We arrived at Lake Bonney just outside of Barmera SA for the night, in the trusty Camps 6 this campsite even gets a tick for fabulous, but the authors obviously visited this site before the rain came!!!  The picture in the book that showed camping on flat sandy ground was now covered in 2 metres of water!! It would have been OK if we had a submarine.  We did plan to have a day stop over here, give the kids a travel break but Pete and I quickly decided that this wasn’t the stopover place for us.  We did though find a flat spot and settled in for the night and the bonus was a flushing toilet just for us.  Dinner occurred with fabulous lake view and the kids were once again able to catch carp!!

Below is the track to a campsite that we didnt take!! Pete said something about the caravan not being 4wd....dont be crazy woman!!  There was a great view at the end of this track!!