Last night, we opened some windows and thought there might be some noise from the highway, but felt it would be worth it - the southerly change had come through and we wanted some fresh air rather than air con. During the night it actually started to rain a bit, which was lovely, however, early morning we woke to the smell of bushfire smoke, so had to close the windows as we couldn't breathe. So it was a hazy day today, and remained so on our long drive towards the South Australian border. We noticed the road to Mt Remarkable National Park was closed due to a bushfire, so we're glad we chose not to stay south of Port Augusta last night (we had considered staying at Mambray Creek).

We were all enjoying the drive so much that nobody noticed we started heading down the Augusta Highway towards Port Wakefield (ie, South), rather than the Clare/Goyder Highway towards Burra (ie, South East)! At Redhill, we stopped for petrol and morning tea anyway, and immediately started to cut across to Burra. It was a lovely scenic route, through beautiful towns such as Koolunga/Brinkworth/Blythe all surrounded by pastures. The highlight was going through the pretty winery area of Clare Valley and stopping at Burra for lunch - Burra is known as one of the best preserved towns of the Victorian Era. We arrived at Renmark around 3.30pm to have a very late lunch and take in our first good view of the Murray River. It was a very hot afternoon - we checked out the Visitor Centre, Eamon joined into a cricket game on the riverfront and we had a cleansing ale at the Club overlooking the river while we worked out what to do tonight! We were hoping to get to Mildura today, but Renmark looked nice, and the Big4 had some great facilities - and Mildura was another 90 minutes away plus 30 minutes for the time change so we decided to stay put.

The park was crazy busy, but we had a waterfront site and had a great evening enjoying the waterpark, swimming pool and spa, playground and jumping pillow, and watching a heap of boats taking out people for waterskiing, wakeboarding, kneeboarding, etc.