Day 46 – October 16 2012

A pleasant morning sitting outside having breakfast looking at Lake Hattah filtered through the river red gum saplings & watching & hearing the birds.  We had another visit from the family of apostle birds, though not as insistent this morning as they were yesterday.  We stayed sitting & enjoying the scenery until we decided it was time to pack & go.

The drive today was through a lot of irrigated grape vineyards & fruit orchards, I have never seen so much acreage of either previously, there are also a lot of very large irrigation channels & huge pumps in the Murray River.  Some of the land that is too sandy for agriculture is national park, typically near the river where it tends to flood a lot.  We refuelled at Swan Hill & stopped just outside at Lake Boga for lunch at a small park.  On display was a giant steam pump that was used to pump irrigation water for many years, from 1903 to 1952, capable of pumping 3 million gallons a day (13.6 million litres).  After Lake Boga the farming changed to some wheat & a lot of dairy farms, some farms had hundreds of Friesian milking cows in their herd.  The pastures were also supported by irrigation from the Murray River.

The twin town of Echuca-Moama was our destination for the day, so we found a spot in a riverside caravan park in Moama, on the NSW side of the Murray River.  The Karavan was just about set up when it started to rain & blow strongly, so we sat inside & waited it out for a short while, then took advantage of the washing machine & clothes drier to handle the backlog of washing we had. Our first shower in a few days was also very welcome, to wash some of that mallee sand & dust away from our small desert ventures.

To top the day off Tereza cooked a magnificent steak dianne for dinner & it was washed down with the last of a nice shiraz I had.  Another pleasant day after a 356km drive.