Our destination today is a caravan park at Fort Courage, in NSW and on the banks of the Darling River about 25km outside of Wentworth.

The route we chose took us from South Australia, into Victoria then into NSW.   Pretty cool!   

Long straight roads, emus everywhere.

Buggar, we had to dump fruit again as we were entering Victoria and the Sunraysia region.   So we had an all fruit breakfast, standing in the middle of nowhere, in dead silence, on a never-ending long road jamming grapes, bananas and mandarins into our mouths.   I reckon we will be paying for that later!

More long, long straight roads, stubble paddocks of huge proportions, giving way to equally mind-blowing acres of grape vines on one side and almond ?? trees on the other.   Our only companions on the road are big trucks transporting produce and grain from state to state.   My God, this is an amazing country!

A short drive on, over the Abbotsford bridge spanning the Murray River, turned left and into Wentworth, a couple of clicks down the road where the Mighty Murray meets the Darling River. George Sturt named the Murray River here in 1830 and in the late 1800's Wentworth went on to be the largest inland port in Australia for the 400 riverboats carrying goods along the two rivers.

The Darling brings water from Southern Queensland and northern NSW.   In 1956 the Darling was running very high and with solid rains in the Murray catchment, that river too began a steady rise which created one of the largest floods in history.   It almost drowned Wentworth.   The water level of the Murray, in Renmark, from where we had just driven, reached 10.2 metres above normal levels, forcing mass evacuations and a long recovery for the whole community.

25km out of town we were at Fort Courage Angling and Fishing Club Caravan Park.

Basically we just caught up with ourselves and nature during these couple of days. We kayaked, Bill more than me as he fished numerous times from the kayak. I walked and walked although it was pretty boring on the road in the middle of nowhere.   The road was dead straight and my walk was 8k round trip and still no end in sight!    A couple of cars which I could see in the distance as a shimmer, then slowly, very slowly, getting bigger and bigger and closer.   Just like you see in the movies!   Weird, but a great thing to see!   So then I took to walking some tracks leading out from the camp.   Sparse bushes which was pleasing – meant I would hopefully see any snakes if they should venture out and as I am really heavy on my feet, I am sure I would have frightened them away anyhow! So – no snakes was good.    But I did find 3 old graves in the middle of no place.

I had heard there were some and 5km of walking and searching I finally found them.   Makes me wonder what they were doing here and what existed here way back when!   Great stuff.

I apologise now for all the sunset photos!
 
And so we pack up and leave this dustbowl and head for Broken Hill