Adelaide to Murray Bridge – On the road again. Day 297

After a three month break, half of which was spent visiting family and friends in Northern Ireland and holidaying in Japan (a firm favourite), we are back on the road again rambling around Australia in our caravan. This time some winter-time travel, inland in South Australia and Victoria focusing on the Murray River with some time in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. Essentially a return trip from Adelaide to Canberra in the slow lane, covering around 5000 kms in an anticipated time period of just less than three months.

My astute reader will notice that this entry refers to Day 297. That is because it is our 297^th day travelling around Australia since we picked up our new caravan in January 2022. You have not inadvertently missed entries for the other 296 days……. I have not written them yet. I aim to do so in due course – stay tuned but don’t hold your breath!

Before I start entries for this part of our ramblings a bit of context, if I may?

In January 2022, after a long wait, we finally picked up our new (and first) caravan with plans in place to travel around Australia.

Our caravan is a 20.5ft Off Road Zone RV which we tow with our Y62 Nissan Patrol which we acquired about nine months earlier specifically to tow the van which we had ordered at that time.

While many longer term travellers in Australia sell up and hit the road full time we decided to retain our home as a base. In fact we bought a new one in Adelaide and moved there from Canberra just as we were picking up our caravan and commencing our travels.

We plan to spend roughly half our time travelling around Australia, using the caravan as a base from which to explore. We have been, and will be, travelling slowly and ‘smelling the roses’ rather than flitting from ‘sight’ to ‘sight’. While we will visit all the key attractions there will be many days when we purposely do bugger all. This is as much a lifestyle choice for us as it is an extended holiday.

As I create this entry (July 2023) we have , as noted earlier, already spent 296 days on the road in the year and a half since we acquired the van. In that time we have clocked up almost 25,000 kms (16,000 kms towing the van and 9,000 exploring from our various camp sites). While this may sound a lot (especially to my overseas reader), it is nothing relative to the size of Australia. For those, like myself, with rather rusty maths skills, it equates to an average distance of 83 kms per day. Many travelling around Australia will average over 300 kms per day.

We are in no hurry but have big plans.

So that out of the way off we go, Canberra bound.

The first day of any big trip with the caravan is more about getting on the road and setting up rather than sight seeing.

As I am not of the landed class, my property being rather modest in size, I do not have place to store a caravan. As such it is stored in a local commercial storage facility. This means rather than pack and get the van ready over a period, for practical reasons, it has to all be done on a couple of visits to the storage facility. Accordingly, day one of this trip really started a few days earlier when we moved most of the necessaries (bar fresh and frozen food and our clothes) into the van and gave it a bit of a clean, internally.

As this process involved nothing of interest to my reader (or indeed to me) I took no photos but lest you have got bored just reading text to this stage I will drop in a few photos of some new murals I encountered on a walk in Port Adelaide earlier in the day.

Moving on to our actual departure, we had organised a 9am pickup of the van so an early start was necessary to finish our packing. On arrival at the storage yard we transferred food, clothes and other things we had forgotten about a few days earlier from the car into the van before hooking up and leaving the storage facility.

When we store the van we do so with the three water tanks full – around 280 litres. Rather than burn fuel lugging all of this up and over the Adelaide Hills to our first stop at Murray Bridge we dumped about 100 litres, taking care not to kill the water pump in the process. We also gave the van a quick hose down to remove storage cobwebs and handed over our house keys to our wonderful house sitters.  Soon we were on our way out of Adelaide.

As alluded to above, leaving Adelaide we had to climb up into the Adelaide Hills via a 7 kms long slow upwards slog through the Heysen Tunnels – a route well known, used and hated by truck drivers and caravaners alike. Though we have pulled our nearly 3.5-tonne van up many hills, we were still a little apprehensive about this one. We need not have worried as our Y62 Nissan Patrol handled it beautifully, and indeed, we passed a couple of trucks along the way.

Climbing out of a dull and dreary Adelaide en-route to Murray Bridge – photo does not show the real severity of the climb!

The remainder of the (approximately 90kms) trip to Murray Bridge was through gorgeous rolling country side, beautifully green given all the recent rain we have had. Though it has rained pretty solidly for the last few weeks in Adelaide we were blessed with a gorgeous, mostly sunny, day today after leaving a dull and dreary (weatherwise) Adelaide behind.

A few minutes after the previous image – a gorgeous day welcomes us out of the city,

Talking of rain, we had actually planned on doing this trip back in March 2023 but had to abandon it then as the Murray River was badly flooded and key (read nearly all) roads, campsites and towns were cut off for many months. I will come back to these awful floods as we move along the Murray River while at the same time hopefully coping with the cold to freezing nights we will encounter as we make our way towards Canberra. All our travels to date have been in significantly warmer climes.

Our abobe in Murray Bridge was the Showgrounds. In terms of camping my reader will soon realise that we rarely stay in caravan parks preferring free or low-cost campgrounds where we can find them. In addition to not paying for facilities we don’t need in caravan parks, free and low-cost campgrounds generally offer much more room and flexibility. Gone are my days of bouncing pillows and water slides. The Murray Bridge Showgrounds is a low-cost campground at A$10 per night for unpowered sites. Given a reasonable amount of clear/sunny days our battery system is sufficient for our power needs. The nice green grass here is also a welcome change from the red dust we have so often encountered to date.

While not of the artistic quality of the murals I included earlier in this post, the pet pavilion at the showgrounds was artistically embellished. Some fun additions to the camping area.

Having disconnected the van and done all the necessities to stabilise and secure it, our internal setup today took much longer than normal as we had to unpack and correctly stow all the things we had earlier just ‘thrown into’ the van.

Soon we noticed that even though there was sufficient sunshine, the van batteries were not recharging… we panicked until we remembered that we had isolated the solar panels a few months earlier when we put the van into storage – a switch flicked and we were back to producing power again. Unsurprisingly, the temperamental gas hot water system played funny buggers, as usual when it has not been used for a while. Lighting the stove and getting gas running through the pipes again very soon meant hot water and a hot shower. The third key element to van life survival for us (in colder climes) – the diesel heating system – worked a treat when tested.

Given the extended setup time we ended up with a late lunch and decided a nap was in order. A couple of hours later we awoke and unanamiously agreed that going out for dinner was a better option to cooking.

We chose the Murray Bridge Club for dinner, and it was a mighty fine choice – delicious chicken parmigiana and seafood and chips.

A fitting end to a busy day.

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The next review from my Adelaide to Canberra road trip can be found HERE.

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