Crossing the Border

We continued on our mystery travels on Wednesday, heading east.

One thing we had noticed in Waikerie was the TV aerials.  I've no idea what the reception is like these days, as we didn't have the telly on at all while we were away,  but it obviously has been an issue, with all the tall aerials.  Quite a sight.

As we headed out of town we followed a sign to a lookout.  It is Hodders Bend and has a popular camping ground beside the river.  It was nice to see some of the stunning river cliffs.

You will have to forgive most of my following photos as they were taken out of the ute as we were driving along and have either reflections or windscreen grime. 

The next town we travelled through was Berri.  There were loads of vineyards in the district, huge expanses.  The trellissing must cost a fortune and take simply ages to install.  They are all so precise.  Some vineyards are all pruned, while some haven't been done as yet.  We saw where a few had been removed, but there were new plantings as well.

We also noticed a couple of huge wineries.  The scale was somewhat different to our old next door neighbour's enterprise, but he was still a prize winner.

Berri was a nice town beside the Murray River.  The information centre had a lovely cafe, so we partook of coffee and cake while enjoying this scene.  Rather hard to take.  We learnt that the bridge you can see was only opened in 1997.  Before that all traffic still had to use a ferry to cross the river.  That must have been so inefficient for such recent times.

Of course we had to take a photo of the Big Orange as we drove past.

The next large centre we drove through was Renmark.  Unfortunately, our trip was just travelling at this stage and not really playing the tourist.  We had to briefly call into a supermarket and were somewhat bemused at this motorhome.  It all looked a tad rough, but it seems to work.

Once again we crossed the Murray and the bridge this time was interesting.  It had been an opening bridge, which is no longer used.  They have added a lane for the traffic on either side.  The lanes were only just wide enough.  Rather nerve wracking.  You wonder why they didn't make them just a foot or so wider.  I'd hate to be taking a large semi trailer over it.

We had travelled through various fruit fly quarantine areas in our travels, meaning we had to pretty much buy our veges daily.  This was the final quarantine station we saw.  There are no restrictions as you leave South Australia.

And then we were in Victoria.  No big fancy signs or areas to take a photo, such as when you enter South Australia or Western Australia.

We were noticing crops on one side of the road, but it was still salt bush on the other side.

If you look closely at the above photo you will see lots of animals in the crop.  No, it is not sheep or cattle, it is emus (OK, so they are birds not animals).  There were so many that at first glance you thought it was a mob of cattle.  The farmer would not be pleased to have them grazing on his crop like that.

Eventually, we started to look for somewhere to have our lunch.  We came to a little place called Lake Cullulleraine.  After finding a poorly signposted turnoff we found a delightful picnic ground beside the lake.  There were heaps of Little Corellas making a racket.  As I was taking this photo a couple of council workers came by and said they couldn't believe I was doing that.  They told us that they are incredibly destructive and we could take them with us if we liked.  We noticed later quite a few eating a shade cloth over a playground, so we see what they meant.

There were also several swamp hens.

We noticed that the weather was looking decidedly dark to the south, but we were lucky and it stayed away.

Our destination that night was Mildura, where we stayed in a caravan park in town.  It was very convenient to the supermarket, but it was quite tight for maneuvering the van.  We have visited Mildura in the past, as a Ulysses Rally was held there, so we didn't mind too much at not having a look around this time.

Just a couple more days and we would be home.