Milawa to Home

Our time at Brown Brothers Winery free RV park was just amazing. The food at their winery was very well priced and excellent quality.

We managed to stagger home across the road quite easily and without getting ourselves into trouble.

Yackandandah

After two very enjoyable nights at Milawa it was time to head to Yackandandah, one of our favourite towns. The jam-session at the Star Hotel on Wednesday night was as on our trip earlier this year.

Yackandandah is on the air highway between Sydney and Melbourne. These babies are always overhead.

Mountaingrass Festival at Harrietville

The festival was a very interesting experience although nowhere as good as Tamworth, which is without doubt the best music festival we've been to. The night at the Harrietville Hotel where Pete Denahy performed was quite something. We couldn't get into the caravan park at Harrietville so had to stay 13kms down the road in Freeburgh. This was a very nice park, but it's in the middle of nowhere and I wondered why people stay there.

King Parrots at our home at the Freeburgh Caravan Park

Yackandandah

It was then back again to Yackandandah to see The Wizard in concert at the hotel, which had been sold to us as a super piano playing Wizard. But we were terribly disappointed with this show.  All it was only an old guy with a long grey beard playing a piano. He could play it ok, but it lacked the special something that we were promised. We felt ripped off, even though it was a free concert!

The Wizard

At least we had great coffee at The Rusty Bike

Bright

Bright turned out to be a real bright star in this area. We rode our bikes heaps, along their various rail-trails. These are dotted with cafes serving fine coffee and food.

A real find there was the Tomahawks Restaurant. They served smoked and southern fried food, as well as Korean food. It was an amazing mix and one which we enjoyed twice.

Lunch at Tomahawks on the sidewalk

Camping in Bright Big 4 Caravan Park

At the back of our caravan site was the Ovens River. What a bonus this is for Bright with water slides, and a free water park in the centre of town.

From our site, we could see platypus in the river. They're very elusive creatures and we've only see them in the wild once before. They are very quick and very camera shy, so no pictures of these little guys.

Breakfast at the local petrol station. Best Dosa we've had, even better than in India. $10 / Dosa, bargin

 We rode out to Wandiligong and to the Chinese Bridge which was built in the early 2000's to commentate the contribution the Chinese that populated Wandi during the gold rush periods.

Chinese Bridge

Jayne among the roses at Wandi Maze Cafe

Mitta Mitta - Lightning Creek

Mitta is within the Victoria High Country. There's a really good free camp at Lightning Creek. Last night we had a thunder storm which echoed along the valley we're camped in. Poor Bailey was stressed out and jumped onto my lap like what he used to when he was a young puppy. He was shaking all over. Poor Bailey.

After a while he calmed down, no more shakes. He looks fairly comfortable, doesn't he?

Camping at Lightning Creek - Mitta Mitta

Lunch at Mitta Mitta Hotel - there was a wedding on, so we couldn't use their very nice Beer Garden.

From Mitta Mitta it was off to Mannus Lake near Tumbarumba. We've been here earlier on this year and we had the place to ourselves. However it was a bit different when we arrived as the place was full of local weekend warriors.

We managed to find a corner which had great views, actually better than where we have camped before. So all was good.

Mannus Lake camping

Total Trip Summary

This certainly was our most uncoordinated trip so far, almost without any plan except for travelling the Gary Junction Road, Ningaloo Station and WA wildflowers. All 3 wereticked off in the first half of our time away.

When we left Ningaloo Station it was only 10kms short of the intersection to the north-south road that I said to Jayne "So which way am I turning, right to go south to Perth or left, to go north to Broome?"

We turned right and headed south, which actually turned out to be the wrong decision with regards to the weather, as it was bitterly cold and wet in southern WA. Here I was always thinking that it never rained in Perth, a theory that was very much proven to be wrong. So much so, we're going to start sending one of our  Salesmen to Perth next year! Does that make this a business trip?

This cold weather caused us to change our original plan of heading home via the Nullarbor Plain and head north at Kalgoorlie along the Great Central Road to Ayres Rock. A very good decision.

The damage to our van's "white goods" and wheel rims was something we had never experienced before to such a degree. Yes, I can point it to one days' drive on the Gary Junction Road where I drove about 3 hours of the day on this very corrugated road, at way too high a speed. But I had the tyres down at 20psi cold, so this should have been enough to soften the impact.

We bent 3 of the 4 running wheel rims on the van, which I believe was caused because the original Bridgestone D697 tyres on the BushTracker are lower in profile height than what we ran on the Kedron. Also, I have realised that these Bridgestone tyres have weaker sidewalls. We destroyed our first one on tarred roads at only 6,000kms and it was a sidewall failure that caused this. Bridgestone wouldn't have anything to do with the failure.

Also contributing to this damage inside the van is the fact that the BushTracker has stiffer suspension that the Kedron.

The moral to this story, replace all tyres on the van with higher profile BF Goodrich T/A KO2's, and drive slower over corrugations, put the TV and microwave on the bed when we do longer dirt roads. We never stop learning!