Well that 90 minute drive turned into around 2 ½ hours. We climbed steep mountains with awesome scenery into the valleys below, glimpsed through the crack in some of the trees.   The water temperature in the car certainly on the rise.   Then down, down, down, really steep low gear stuff, with the brakes certainly warming up. Mountains and valleys and plains all in the space of 20 minutes or so.   We stopped to let the brakes cool at the Southern Cloud Memorial .

So on we went to Tintaldra.    On the way we called into a free camp, except it wasn't what we expected or wanted.   Down a really narrow road with room for only one vehicle. Heaven knows who would want to give way if you met someone on the up!   Little room for turnaround at the bottom – just nasty!   This is the joy of doing your own sweet thing, let's continue on and see what we can find at Tintaldra.

Another 20 minutes and the next 'town’ of Tintaldra couldn't really be called that.   One pub and a caravan park and nothing else, however, hold everything.    We just crossed a bridge over the Murray River – good grief, we are in Victoria and this place is our first encounter with a Victorian town.   Not impressed! Let's keep driving.   So yet again we consult the free camping book (thanks to a present from Tina) and continue on.

Another 20km and we come to Clarke’s Lagoon.   We check it out and whoa!   What an amazing place in the middle of nowhere, right on the Murray River running clear and fast.   We find a private, level grassed area, flanked on two sides by huge trees and right on the banks of the Murray.

To say Bill is in heaven is an understatement, we are set up in 10 minutes with 2 rods baited and in the water.   No bait as such, so some corned beef fat and some worms we had frozen.    The shrimp baskets were loaded with revolting smelly old fish Bill had kept, and 4 were thrown in the river hopefully to catch some shrimp and yabbies.

What a fantastic place.   There are dirt roads all around and a walk quickly discovers an awesome little ‘beach’ with very cool Murray water.    The cockatoos and corellas are in abundance and we love them.   This spot brings out the Boy Scout in Bill and by 6pm there is an open fire glowing, drinkies and nibblies with the fire on one side and the Murray and its cool breeze on the other.   Absolute bliss!

Dinner was yummy sandwiches and corned beef with lashings of wine!    Comes 8pm and we are still savouring the great outdoors, sitting by the river.   It was all but dark, and in the glimmer of the fire and a clear night Bill could see one of the rods bend and snap back.   s***! A catch.   And what a catch   A beautiful Murray Cod about 3kg caught on corned silverside fat!   What a feed we will have tomorrow night.   To say Bill was happy is a total understatement.   He is delirious and he slept very well, knowing there are more fish to be caught.

So we wake on Tuesday to the sound calls of the Cockatoos and Corellas, an absolutely glorious morning with the warm sun peeking through the trees on a cool morning.

Boy Scout Bill is on duty and uses the still warm embers of last nights fire to start a new one.   "gotta have a morning fire and a night fire" he says.   Who am I to argue.   Cup of coffee done and I toast our English Muffins on a skewer over the fire.   Butter and Tina’s lemon butter – heaven!

I go for an hours walk and then we drive to Walwa, about 10-12km down the road.   A cute, on-horse town with an amazing general store/cafe/restaurant, set up in a 1920’s building with really high ceilings.   This store not only stocked your daily grocery needs but was also the home to so many items from the early 1900’s through to the 50’s.   The cafe general area was set up with old formica top kitchen tables and padded chairs of the day.   The walls were cluttered with all things horticultural from saddles and bridles to pit saws and milk cans and ice coolers – I cannot remember it all.   The restaurant room walls were lined with big old hutch dressers, absolutely laden with dinner sets of the 1920’s and 30’s, more crockery, glassware, bowls, ornaments – incredible!

So we bought our bread, filled the car with fuel, had a mango frappe (yes we did) and headed back to camp.   It was so hot by now, around 30 degrees and time to cool off in the Murray.   We walked a couple of hundred metres down the track to the ‘beach’, where the bank drops away and you can access the river easily by walking across the grass, over the pebbles and into the water.   It was deliciously cold!   I took a bit longer than Bill to get covered by the icy chill in the shallows, but it was so worth it!   The body takes no time at all to become accustomed to this pleasure.

Back to camp and time to prepare dinner.   Pumpkin, potatoes and carrots wrapped in foil, buried under the camp fire embers and ash and baked for a couple of hours.  

This done, it was time to relax but not for long!    One of the rods was whacked and man, was it going crazy.    Bill was there in a split second, his smile extending from one ear to the other – truly!   Man this thing was fighting.   It had to be a carp, unfortunate as that was, it was still a helluva lot of fun that Bill had landing this 6kg fish.   As in NZ, you cannot return carp to the water as they are a pest and must be killed and buried or whatever.   Bill loved the fight and unfortunately that was his last encounter with fish on the Murray – at least here.

So, on to dinner;  a little butter in the pan and then fry that beautiful cod Bill caught last night.   This was a feast fit for a king – the most delish and in the most amazing setting.   It surely cant get better than this …. Can it?

Wednesday 16 March is our last day in camp and I had another long walk in the coolness of the morning, followed by a lazy day;  a fruitless hour on my metal detector but a great discovery of a newly dug out wombat hole.   Obviously this hole is active due to fresh droppings around.   This hole is really huge.   Pity we never saw any overnight.   We have seen several on the road where they have been hit by cars and trucks.   Not nice to see.    And so some clearing up and readying ourselves to move on tomorrow.