10/6/2022 – Friday – 278km

An overcast sky & light misty rain as we departed Halls Gap in the Grampian Ranges this morning. There are masses of kangaroos grazing on the grasslands around the town & just after we pass the town boundary a line of 5 emus slowly ambled across the road in front of us. I had to stop the car & wait as they slowly walked across the road. A bit further on there were lots more emus grazing in paddocks on both sides of the road. The country quickly changed to cleared flat grazing & cropping land with a tinge of green.

The old gold mining city of Stawell is the first town we pass through & there are lots of nice old buildings, the old fire station is interesting with a lookout on the roof, we have not seen one like that before. The GPS guided us through Stawell with the few twists & turns, the signposting is not that good & we were glad for the spoken directions, thank goodness for technology.

St Arnaud is the next big town & we stop to have a look at the silo mural art, again this is very good, the artists are amazing with their use of spray paint. After Logan we turn off to Inglewood & travel a lot of one lane bitumen road through some very isolated countryside. It is very pretty hilly country that is lightly forested & fortunately we did not meet too many cars coming the other direction as we had wheels off on the dirt on the side of the road when we had to pass each other. After Inglewood the road was narrow again until the turn-off to Serpentine.  After Serpentine we travelled on narrow one lane roads again across the backblocks of country Victoria. Thank goodness for GPS. The roads are now flat & very straight with sheep, cattle & crops on both sides.

In Echuca we can only stay in the caravan park if we book in for three nights because it is a long week end.  We luck it into the Rotary overnight camping spot next to Campaspe River, no electricity or toilet/bathroom facility, but our caravan has it all.  We set up then head into town. We park outside the Beechworth Bakery & decide to have a late lunch (once again it is after 2pm) pies & coffee again. After lunch we walk along the old main street & come to the Echuca historical wharf area where the old paddle steamers operate from. We walk through the museum & then out onto the old wharf, where we see the old paddle steamer “Canberra” rounding the bend in the river with the paddles churning the water & the steam engine chugging away. The boat whistle blew a few times as it turned to berth at the wharf. We also had a look at the steam engines on display & operating at the old sawmill site out the back of the museum. Back to camp & I attend to a few bills & Tereza goes for a walk along the banks of the Campaspe River taking a few photos of the river & having a chat with some of the fellow campers. We drive back into town for dinner & find a park outside the Echuca Distillery, they specialise in distilling gin. We had a look at the menu in the window & decide to go in & try even though neither of us drink gin. We order roast duck & also pork belly bites with a taster of 3 types of gin. The food is absolutely delicious & the gin is tasty. We also order an affogato for dessert, again delicious. We are surprised that there are not that many customers. Another great day.