To Victoria in December

A niece's wedding on the Mornington Peninsula has shaped the next part of our travel journey. In order to get our end of trimester work done we left on 1 December and headed to Corowa for a caravan park on the Murray River for a week.

Bingara

Grenfell

Corowa

Benalla

We had a great long weekend with family and the wedding was lovely. While the family were busy with hair and makeup and wedding preparations on Saturday morning we went for a drive down to Cape Schanck.

On Monday we fitted in a walk in the Sherbrooke Forest between dropping Darren's brother in law at the bus and meeting other family up in the Yarra Valley.

And on Tuesday we went for a walk along the foreshore at Frankston before heading up to Melbourne for a few days.

A few months "at home"

Now that we're officially "homeless" "home" is the general area of our previous homes. During the three months we spent in South East Qld we stayed with various family and friends, occupying ourselves with uni work, helping people with projects and a few Fire Brigade call-outs.

My "office window" in September.

After the appearance of this python we made sure we kept the garage doors closed!

We had some time at Caloundra while we had work done on the caravan.

We spent a few nights on various lovely friends' properties.

We had a day trip to Tamborine Mountain to see friends and fitted in a short walk.

One of our days helping out at a fire west of Warwick.

Not everything went smoothly with the van work. After a trip back to the factory to get the air conditioner replaced (under warranty) we opted to install the warranty replacement fridge ourselves. We now have a non-leaking a/c and a cold fridge!

Cunnamulla to Toowoomba

The day after our visit to  Currawinya NP we started heading east. We planned to spend the night at the free camp in Cunnamulla, but we discovered that it was right across from side-show alley...

We had a quick early lunch and escaped the loud music for the Cunnamulla Conservation Bushlands. It was interesting walking through the different landscapes, but it would seem that some of the trees identified in the signs had died, and some of the areas were looking rather tired. Rufous songlarks provided the soundtrack for our meandering and we saw a white-winged fairy wren (no photo, though - it wouldn't let Dazz get close enough for a clear shot). No such issues with the steam engine!

Since the free camp was far too noisy to stay, and it was still early enough in the day, we decided to drive through to Bollon that afternoon. We pulled into a spot in the middle of the gravel parking area and went for a walk around the town. There were some nice camp spots right on the river, but they were quite shady. We decided that if a particular van left the next morning we would move to their spot on the grass near the fence. It turned out to be an excellent plan. We were able to fill up with water at a tap near the river and then have a nice private grassy site for a couple of days.

The patches of mulga scrub on red sand were overtaken by black soil as we headed east. In a quest to travel on new (to us) roads, we headed south east, rather than continuing on to St George. Our next camp was on the Ballone Minor River just outside of Dirranbandi. 

Australian Ringneck Parrot

A few photos from the park in Dirranbandi.

Our lunch stop was in Thallon.

Cockatiels

We continued on our very indirect way of getting home by going further south to Mungindi and camped on the Barwon River, which gave us another opportunity to get out on the kayaks.

Brown treecreeper

Apostle bird

Our final stop for the trip was at Toobeah. It was rather uninspiring, and consequently there were no photos.

The two weeks we spent in Toowoomba were a combination of catching up on cleaning and washing, getting organised (i.e. taking stuff out of the van) ready to have some work done on it, and helping Dad and Mum with yard work.