Day 7 and 8 of the great Diment Easter road trip.

Since we had very little Internet coverage last night this is an overview of the last couple of days.

We had a lovely leisurely breakfast with Bob yesterday morning before heading off on our separate ways. Below is a map showing approximately our travels for the day.

Planning the drive

As is our way, we tried to find some back roads that we hadn't been on before, and cut through between the  main highways.
You can't really avoid some long and boring stretches when travelling across the country. There is a limit to the time that it is fascinating to consider the numerous open irrigation ditches (carrying water from the Murray River , over 100km away in some spots). The lovely large trees dotted across the paddocks, with their branches reaching to the sky with such balance are beautiful, but once again,  100s of km of them lose their effect. We switched on the ABC news every few hours and drifted along quietly, working away at the kms, enjoying each others company and silently watching the slowly changing landscape. The flat open irrigation gave way to the larger trees around the Murray,  and then the fruit blocks of the Riverina region.

At such times you have time to wonder why the kangaroos always seem to be frozen with their limbs at strange angles as though they died in the middle of some uncontrollable spasm. We tried not to think about why they stink so much.

It is almost meditative, and one of the few times that I have time to let my mind wander where it will, with no pressure of time or planning to be done. The kilometres will not be hurried, so why should I be?

We stopped for lunch at Finley bakery- beating the midday rush, by about 15 minutes and lingering over a shared chocolate  milkshake and cryptic crossword, before getting out of there as it started to get noisy and busy, and admiring the local lake (should have had lunch there instead) with its grassy banks.

We crossed back into Victoria at the river between Barham and Koondrook, and stopped for a cuppa by the river,  watching a big fish trolling along in the shallow muddy waters edge, before heading north a little way towards Swan Hill, passing big lakes. We zig-zagged our way via the narrow Victorian back roads, getting off the road when trucks came along, and toying briefly with the idea of detouring into the eastern part of Wyperfeld National Park.  We decided instead that we would head for a sure destination, and made our way towards the Murray Sunset National Park and the campsite we have used before by the pink lakes.  As it turned out the main camp was pretty full, and we decided that we would drive on in a little further and found an empty camp site near Lake Becking  which seemed to have our name on it.

We had time to climb the sand hill and admire the view over the salt lake in daylight, to unpack, and to do the same again as the sunset put on a show for us.

A very quick and lazy tea was had, as we had filled our stomachs with fruit mid-afternoon before we crossed the border, finishing off the last of our plums and apples rather than throwing them into the fruit fly bins. (Eating fruit at the border is a great SA tradition, but this time we were caught a bit by surprise as we were protecting the interstate orchardists  rather than our own)

Although the internet was too weak for a blog post, a quick Facebook update was composed, and once again we climbed up the slope (this time in search of a better signal) . As we came down Trevor pointed out lots of sand coloured spiders who were reflecting the light from his headtorch like tiny stars from the ground.  Had it not been for the shine we would have no idea they were about as they were so well disguised.

There was a bit of a breeze as we climbed early into our swags,  but it was the first camping night that we had had a clear sky, and I greatly enjoyed lying in my swag admiring the milky way spread out above me while snuggled warmly in my sleeping bag until finally sleep overtook me. It got cool enough to need the bags by about 5am, when we guess it was down to about 7 degrees C.

This morning we broke camp after a more leisurely start, and were on the road by about 10am. With only just over 300 km to go, we knew we had plenty of time, but we stuck to the familiar highway and stopped only for a cup of tea and a loo stop at Lameroo.

We reached home around 2pm and set about washing up, cleaning up and generally getting ourselves sorted out. As I write this Trevor is still washing the Prado, and the second load of clothes are on.

The final leg of the journey

Now all I have to do is figure out what on earth I did on the last day

Here is the map showing control number two which was never found.  (That will come in another blog) and learn from my mistakes.

...Oh, and plan the next trip of course  😊

Easter day 4-not such a happy story for Erica

It's a bit embarassing to write this one.

It's been another long hard day.

Today I (Erica) managed to find only my first and last control.
I forgot all the good advice I have remembered over the years and didn't stay in touch with the map.  I got completely lost and never found myself until way too late.
I had a wonderful walk and strangely feel quite happy despite having been DNFd  (basically disqualified for not finding all of my controls) today.

Trevor completed his course and finished today which shows good consistency. This Easter he is doing longer courses. He has shown that he can manage them well.

Here are some pictures taken at the event today.

We headed out after the event and stopped not too far down the road by some old cattle stock yards to have some lunch and our first cup of tea for the day sometime after 2pm. We also changed out of our smelly orienteering gear and into our normal clothes, then drove out of town and headed towards SA.  250km or so on and we stopped at the hill rock reserve (just past Wagga Wagga) , which we had checked out on the way over.  We pulled up and set up camp , and later were joined by Bob Smith who is in his A van and also heading homewards. 

Old cattle yards lunch stop

Our camp for the night

Pre dinner eats and drinks while we waited for Bob

Bob has arrived with his fancy A van. 

I'm afraid I do not have a photo of today's map and the light has gone so it will have to wait.

Easter day 3- the orienteering adventure continues.

Tonight Trevor was breathalysed for the third night in a row!

We were coming home from the Orienteering Australia dinner. We were very glad that we went as we saw Robin Uppill awarded the David Hogg medal for services to event management. (Well deserved)

Today was another long hard day of orienteering, and tomorrow is from the same arena, so we expect more of the same.  So far our bodies have held out well, with blisters and a few scratches and gashes the worst that we have to show for it.
Others have not fared so well.

Today Simon Uppill was beaten by 2 seconds by Matt Crane in their ongoing tussle for top male orienteer in Australia. I can't tell you the overall tally-but Matt is in front, so we are barracking for Simon to run a scorcher tomorrow.

Other stand out performances that I know of were the George girls who came in 2nd and 3rd in their class, and Lachlan Hallett who won the sledge again. He will be hard to beat tomorrow.

Here is my map and some of the views from today

The sledge runners deciding who wears what boxer shorts tomorrow. 

This is one very supportive Dad, Ian, who has driven over so that Max can compete.  Today we went out on a course, and had just come back. He was had just opened a special Easter card from his daughter-hence the lovely smile. 

Easter Day 2-day 4 of the great adventure.

Today was certainly an adventure. Here is my map for your reading pleasure.

Those brown lines are Contours-lots of them.   After a 1.3 km walk to the start ( with 120 m of climb!) The extra 165 m over the course (plus more I'm sure) was a bit of a killer. Both Trev and I finished in the bottom third of our fields, but we are still in the running with our slower but careful courses.

Trev did a slightly longer course today and performed slightly better running the longer course length which he has mostly avoided in the last few years.  His recent fitness improvement put him in good stead.

I had the long walk to the start which meant that I hardly saw any finishers before heading for my start,  and we had to rush off to get showered and get to meeting this afternoon , so you don't get many pictures today.
What is here is  outlying of the sledge where we have 3 runners who all,came in in quick succession in the middle of the field.  Andrew Slattery was so hard on Tyson's heels that I missed taking his picture (1 second between them today), and Andrew Kennedy just a few minutes in front .  Lachlan Hallett is winning this course at the moment, but is insisting he is Top End, not SA.

The kids had an interesting string course complete with SI and being managed by about a 10 year old  boy!

 Patrick thought the splits tasted good.

Tyson

Andrew Kennedy

Blue Sparks running the string course 

String course control cand.  Mark off the animal when you find it.

After all of that we had a lovely evening catching up with my brother Andrew, his wife Victoria, and a big surprise to also see Kate (our neice) .

Easter-day 1 (prologue) -day 3 of the great Easter adventure

Today we completed the relatively short hop in to Canberra from Gundagai.

Catching up with many of the south Aussie contingent while we watched the elites competing at Canberra Uni was great.  There were some tricky bits of the map-some right in the spectator area, which made it difficult for the unprepared.

We had great performances from Meredith, Lachlan and Dante (all running in the 20E)

Then we tested ourselves against the course-which was plenty long enough for us at 3 km.  Here is a copy of my map.

Apologies for the quality of the photo.

Tonight we are heading out to catch up with friends who live here after long awaited showers.

On the road to Gundagai. Day 2 of the Easter trip.

Tonight we are in Gundaga having completed another 570 km of driving.

After a very warm, and fairly sleepless night (too quiet and too many mozzies) we admired our surroundings some more before breaking camp.  Someone had put in a lot of work in organizing their gear here.  We wondered if it was the same guy who left his very expensive dririder jacket behind hanging on a tree.

The fishing barge across the river looked lovely this morning.

We hadn't gone far before we saw the first of many irrigation channels-flood irrigating from the river (and using the water before it makes it to South Australia) .

 Just the other side of Moulamein  (with interesting and very comfy swing)

we passed the site for the Confest this year. The sign on the road said "Hippies turning in 500m"
 The local (and not so local) constabulary were highly visible in the area, and we sighted 13 marked police cars, including 4 dog squads, and 1 bus in the local area!! The cops already had a checkpoint up and running with no avoiding a strict vehicle inspection.

Our lunch stop was at Conargo,  where they have childcare once a week. The kids were in the playground right by the picnic area with their carers, who travel in a truck with all their gear to a different town each weekday. So we enjoyed a little boy pretending to be a rooster through our entire lunch stop.(!)

We were travelling on one of the historic stock routes, and passed a couple of mobs of cattle (complete with stockman on motorbike with dog). He may have been called Clancy. 

One of our last stops was at Rock Hill reserve just before Wagga , where we finally found our first geocache for the trip (Kate, please let Jack know)

 before heading into town and laughing at the signage on the local telephone exchange.

After some deliberation about where and when to stop, and a bit of searching, we opted to stop in Gundagai  at an RV friendly park (a patch of grass by the river) where we put out the awning (20% chance of rain) near two historic bridges. We will have a bit of road traffic noise , but it doesn't seem too bad.  Here's hoping for a yummy tea, and a sleep filled night.

Tomorrow we run