3 October 2012 - Nyah Recreation Reserve, Murray River Highway, Victoria

I would not have been at all surprised if my husband had suggested we stay yet another day, and had he done so, I would have happily agreed. But truth be told, five days of country music is probably my lot for a while. It is only one of the many types of music I enjoy and is not in the top five.

And so we did finally leave one of the loveliest caravan parks we have stayed in and would be delighted to stay here again should we pass this way. We headed south east on the Sturt Highway, a route that would take us on through to Sydney if that were our destination, through Buronga where we had been staying but not really bothered to explore, and on to Gol Gol where we stopped at a roadside stall and purchased a bag of brightly coloured navel oranges for $3. The orchards and vineyards stayed on with us until we had passed Trentham Cliffs, and then the river meandered in a more southerly direction and we were left to the mallee lands, the emus and red soil, and paddy melons as we had seen near Alice Springs and again travelling south from Broken Hill, but here interspersed with litter from the travelling public. It is only eighty four kilometres to Euston and as we drew near to this very small town the vineyards were again prevalent. We paused here to pick up a newspaper from the general store which doubles as the camping ground office. There appeared little here to detain us so we resumed our journey, crossing over the river once more into Victoria and Robinvale.

The joint settlements of Euston and Robinvale, spanning the Murray River and the state border comprise a resident population of about 3,200. I had expected more of this and was looking out for the windmill, apparently the largest in the southern hemisphere, erected in 1948 and once used in the supply of water for Robinvale. It is no longer in use and nor does it seem to be the eye catching monument I was expecting. In fact I couldn’t see it anywhere except for the mark on the town map.

We shopped at the large and comprehensive IGA for fresh bread and a few vegetables, noting that navel oranges were $2.99 a bag here. When will we ever learn that roadside stalls are a rip off?

We chatted for some time to a very pleasant Queensland couple who parked up close to us. Allan and Lyn are headed in the same direction as us, at least until Echuca. We exchanged details and wondered if we would catch up along the way.

Back on the road again, we drove on to Boundary Bend where we pulled into the boat ramp beside the river and lunched next to the mighty river in all its slow flowing muddy glory. It is just upstream from here that another of Australia’s great rivers joins the Murray-Darling system; the Murrumbidgee, however we did not bother detouring to the confluence up a six kilometres of dirt road. Outside the van in a quick recci trip to the ramp we were attacked by mosquitos so decided not to hang about but press on.

The highway continued to head south east following the river upstream and passed through a variety of irrigated agricultural lands, orchards, grain crops, vineyards and sometimes arid pastoral land. We passed miles and miles of almond trees neatly set out in rows and squares and rectangles, all standing lush and green on the red earth, presumably well irrigated. And all the time we followed the Murray Valley Highway where one might expect to be travelling through a valley, and in a valley one might expect to see the sides of the valley floor rising even far away, but here there was no evidence of such, just great expanses of flat land. It is in this area the first rice crops were grown in Australia which is something one does not normally think of as Australian.

The river near our camp

We looked out for the entrance road to the Nyah – Vinifera State Forest to no avail, arriving instead at Nyah and at the Harness Club with its expansive recreational ground beside the river. There are many other caravans and motorhomes here enjoying the open areas and those shaded by the river gums. We quickly set up camp without unhitching and set off for an hour long wander along the river. We came to a sign suggesting the southern entrance to the State Forest and realised that the other had been removed. Since the big rains many of the tracks have been closed and the authorities are obviously not too keen on visitors. The river twists and turns, this way and then back on itself, providing a home to a multitude of bird life and the fish heard jumping rather than seen.

The sun is shining on the solar panels, the temperature gauge reading 30 degrees and all is well in the world, and it would seem that Allan and Lyn have just pulled in to a spot close by.