4 October 2012 - Gunbower State Forest – Murray River Reserve, near Koondrook, Victoria

We spent an uneventful night unsociably tucked up in our own van enjoying each other’s company and it was not until this morning that we caught up with Allan and Lyn. We spent a good hour nattering away until another chap came over and asked if we had finished filling with water. We had been hogging the tap.

We drove up through Nyah, a small settlement which did not keep us beyond an insignificant purchase at the General Store, and drove on to Swan Hill, a rural centre of about 10,000 people, again situated on the Murray River. We called into the Information Centre and spoke to the most delightful woman, helpful to a tee. Discussing “independent” camps around the region after learning the local commercial camps were charging in the vicinity of $40 a night, we discovered that she and her husband have a motorhome and do not free camp! This astounded us for we never use a caravan park in New Zealand where dangers lurk in the shape of unsavoury types far more than here in Australia.

Map in hand, we checked out the shopping centre, bought some potatoes and then drove on down to the Art Gallery. As we sat eating our lunch, we noticed Allan and Lyn pull in, wander off for a while, return and then drive off. Following us, we wondered jokingly?

It should be noted here that Swan Hill was named by the explorer Major Thomas Mitchell whose trail we seem to travel here and there. In June 1836 he camped on a sand hill near the Murray surrounded by water and reed beds, alive with water birds. He had a restless night, frequently woken by the noise of black swans above. The next day he decided to name the place “Swan Hill”. Today there was no evidence of those swans or their descendants.

We checked out the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery well recognised as having one of Australia’s most comprehensive collections of naive art. Now I am a fan of a lot of naive art, however I found today, not all. There was also an extensive collection of work by a “special” person, Ivor Cantrill, all bright and simple, beyond naive, and not at all to my taste or Chris’s and another small collection done by artists investigating their own mental illnesses. It was altogether a rather unusual gallery but worth the visit.

After such a bizarre injection of culture, we set off down river on foot along the “River Walk”, a very pleasant walk of about five kilometres, past the lift bridge built in 1896 and still operating, the confluence of the Murray and an anabranch, the Little Murray or Marraboor River and a number of parks and fishing spots. Although it was hot, somewhere over 30 degrees, we enjoyed the exercise and the delightful surroundings. As we returned to the vehicle and passed the Pioneer Settlement Museum which we had spied through the boundary fence, we checked out the opening times and admission price. We felt the $26 or so per person was too much to see yet more restored carts and carriages, even though there was no doubt a wealth of wonderful history to accompany the machinery. One cannot visit every single museum in the country and for us, price becomes one of the triggers for such choice.

We had been told of areas downstream where campers frequented without penalty, even though there were no official free camps within the area, so we headed off along this narrow bitumen road following the river bank, wending our way past dozens of lifestyle properties, but found nothing suitable for a rig such as ours. And so we headed back through Swan Hill and on south past Lake Boga which played a significant part in the Second World War dealing with flying boat matters. The rest area beside the lake is marked as a day area in the Camps 5 & 6, and we did wonder if it were also used by cheeky campers as an overnight site. There was no evidence of this and more importantly there were “No Camping” signs so we turned and proceeded on down the highway.

Our camp in the Gunbower State Forest Reserve

At Kerang, sixty kilometres south east of Swan Hill, we turned north east and travelled twenty four kilometres to Koondrook where we found the entrance to the canoe track here in this gum forest. We crossed a weir and bumped along the corrugations for perhaps a kilometre until we found this flat open spot back off the road. As we were setting up we glanced across toward the river. About three hundred metres away is a rig that looks decidedly like that of Allan and Lyn. We will go for a wander in the morning and see if it is indeed them. Who is following who now?