At Hogwash Bend…………Days 33 & 34

26th & 27th April

We left Kapunda around 9am in the morning heading in the general direction of Renmark. We haven’t travelled all that far today, only 116 kms to Hogwash bend. Our first town was Eudunda, the birthplace of Colin Thiele, author and educator. One of his books is “The Sun & The Stubble” .

After a quick look around we continued eastwards when suddenly we saw a small plane like structure on top of a building. This was the Southlands Hotel, still operational, in what was a small hamlet but now is the only operational building.

We were lucky in finding another pretty morning tea spot at Mt Mary, again a small hamlet with the pub being the only building that is functional. The pub is the building to the left. The other building used to be a shop but seems to be a private residence now. The railway line used to run from Morgan to Kapunda through Mt Mary until 1969..

After morning tea we came into Morgan which was a surprise for us as we didn’t realise it was on the Murray River. What a pretty place. We watched the ferry taking cars across the river and had a look around, especially the old wharf area.

Here is the Murray river at Morgan. Those are huge houseboats in the background.

While I was taking photos of a couple of hotels in the main street a man in a car stopped and asked if I wanted to take his photo. I replied no but if he had a dog in the car I would like to take a photo of the dog, and guess what, here is the dog.

We noticed a flag flying that we hadn’t seen before, so we asked about it at the old wharf area. The flag is for the Lower Murray Region. The four blue stripes represent the 4 rivers that flow into the Murray River – the Lachlan, the Murrumbidgee, the Murray and the Darling River.

We intended to bush camp at a place called Hogwash Bend and took a right turn that led us straight down to the river and a ferry. Mild panic set in for a minute as we thought we may have to back up the caravans uphill and around a curve onto a main road. When the ferry touched on our side the operator said she could carry us one at a time so Lance & I slowly drove onto the ferry. Off we went with one other passenger car.

(Above Photo courtesy of John & Denise). That’s me in the pink.

Next trip it was John & Denise’s turn on the ferry -

………and this ferry trip was free.

The road led us into Cadell, a town known for its citrus fruit. Again there were almost no shops and as it was a Saturday it was difficult to know if the Cadell Store was still operational.

About 11 kms up the road we found our destination for the night - - Hogwash Bend, an idyllic camping spot on the banks of the Murray River.

Like everyone else here, we decided to built a camp fire.People were taking their utes and getting great logs from somewhere while others like us scoured the wooded area around us. Our fire lit, we all sat back and starred it. John has been duly elected Fire Chief in charge of camp fires.

The next day, Sunday.

For one who is used to seeing houseboats on the Mandurah estuary, seeing one this size first thing in the morning was a bit of a surprise.

This morning we stoked up the fire again and boiled the billy before toasting our bread, using toaster forks that John had created the night before.

….and here are the boys toasting our breakfast:

Kurgan was a bit tired after all the early morning activity.

Then we decided to heat up some home made sausage rolls Lance had made before we left. John’s camp oven was found and put into use to heat the sausage rolls. While this was happening I was attacked by a fire ember that burnt through my new jacket , my T short and my skin.

As it was a busy day cooking on the fire we started discussing jaffles for lunch but we were a bit short of the required bread. The couple camped next to us brought over a half used loaf of bread as they were leaving and heading back to Adelaide, so jaffles were on the menu for lunch.

We spent the afternoon watching our neighbours…………….

………watching another huge houseboat wander by……….

………. and watching the activities of others…………….

Waiting for afternoon tea……

For tea, Denise has offered to cook a damper while the boys are cooking a camp stew. While it was all cooking I wandered down the Murray River to see the sunset – not a stunning one, but a good effort.

This is being posted a day or so late as our internet is a bit scratchy here at Hogwash Bend.