ACT retirement adventure road trip- day 3

November 30th we pulled out from our lovely river campsite at 8.50am.
We followed the road alongside the Edward river initially and it was a day for reptiles.  We saw 2 goannas  (both making changes of direction crossing the road) , skins and also skinks.

Having followed along the road for an hour or so we stopped at Moulamein -first to admire their local memorial park and then to check out their river walk.

The park had 150 roses planted (one for each year) to commemorate the years since establishment in 1851. There is also a range of old machinery and carts which really makes you realize how easy we have it these days. An old cart made virtually completely of wood (even the wheels) with yoke for the oxen to pull it, and old pile driver weight used to drive the poles in for many of the bridges built in the area, and a strange , horse pulled contraption, somewhat like a whim, where the horse walks around in a circle, driving a pump.

Horse driving whim motor

Pile driver

The sign to "The big tree" caught Trevor's attention and we found ourselves in a broad car park area, from where we could follow a track down beside the river ...so we did.
The big tree was one of the attractions (circumference 11.6m) as it stands at the side of the river. It is probably 500 to 1000 years old.

Not much further along the track you can look across the river to the Ring tree. The branches were twisted around each other when it was young and it has now grown with a ring in the centre .  This marks the boundary for local aboriginal groups.

A little further and you can look across to the old Mooloomoon shearing shed, which had 32 stands, and from where the wool was loaded on to the river and carted to Echuca. This operated to some extent until 2001.

Today we saw a couple of quite big goannas as well as skinks. Must be reptile season.

We filled up with fuel at Deniliquin and then took a drive down around the river.  There were numerous tracks around the river flats and we started driving only to find ourselves locked into a much longer driver than we had anticipated. Eventually we found our way out of there.

We found a local bakery and sat and read the papers while we ate our lunch and had a cuppa, before heading off on our way again.  it was still very very hot. The farmers were hard at work making the most of the fine weather, as there was rain on the way (lots of rain) . As we passed further into NSW we saw more and more flood irrigation (including new areas of this) , with the water sitting evaporating from the ditches and lovely green crops.

We arrived at one of our favourite camping areas (the rock) at about 5pm to find we had the place to ourselves.  Before setting up camp we decided to do one of the walks. It was a bit confusing which path to take to start - and we took the wrong one, meaning that we took on a much harder and longer climb than we anticipated.

 In the end I turned around before I got to the top of the rock, but Trevor continued on and completed the scenic loop, rather than backtracking down the tricky rock scramble like I did.  There were some great views from up here and also some impressive rocks - climbing is banned in some areas due to Peregrine Falcons breeding.

great views over the surrounding areas

impressive rock faces

The shelter at the rock, which was one of the reasons to stop here tonight.  If the rain got going we could drag the swags in here.
The lights didn't work!!

You could hear the nearby silos working and the local road was very busy with grain trucks delivering.