Sunday, April 8th, 2012: Along the Murray River to Euston, Victoria
Bob: Once again we headed eastward having only the vaguest idea where we would lay our weary heads that evening. We backtracked to the west edge of Renmark to visit a very large rose garden, but found it was more of a large commercial rose nursery than a garden as such. That said, there were hundreds of roses over a space of an acre or two as well as a gift shop. The gift shop did not, however, open until nine and we saw no compelling reason to wait, so we returned through the center of Renmark and continued on the Sturt Highway (A 20) to the East. But of course when we reached the historical bridge at Paringa just down the road from Renmark, we had to stop and take pictures of it. The lift-bridge was built in 1927, as I recall, and was still in use. The center railroad line had been converted to a hiker-biker path when the railroad ceased operations, I guess, but the two narrow car lanes cantilevered out from each side of the main span still carried all the automobile traffic. And I am here to tell you that they were really, really narrow lanes and the whole thing didn't look all that sturdy! Still, it was impressive to see the old bridge well maintained and still going strong. |
Monika: On we went along the Murray River. Immediately after Renmark we crossed one of the original bridges across the Murray. Of course we stopped to take pictures. We also went along the river a bit to take pictures of lock 5. |
Bob: We also took time out to take a 13-kilometer side excursion out to a viewpoint on the bluffs above the North side of the Murray. The soil that was eroding from the bluffs was an astonishing palette of hues of red, orange, yellow, and white. It reminded me very much of the Painted Desert in the Southwest of the United States, but clearly along the Murray the erosion process was still going strong--I saw an erosion gully leading right back toward the observation tower, and I think they will sooner or later have to move that tower back a bit! |
Monika: One of the volunteers on the paddle steamer had told us that there were some spectacular cliffs just a little ways off the road. So we decided to go for the extra 13 kilometers and the side trip was well worth it. The cliffs were truly spectacular in different hues of yellow and white. They even had a lookout tower so that we could take nice pictures. |
Bob: Meandering on our merry way down the Murray, we continued East for an hour or so, but then curled around back North and West a bit to see the confluence of the Darling and Murray rivers. That was also an astonishing thing: the Darling River was just loaded with mud and silt, whereas the upstream Murray River looked much more clean and pristine. When the rivers joined, they continued on downstream as far as the eye could see with the waters on the Darling side still being a deep muddy brown while the waters on the Murray side were a bright, clear blue. I've never seen anything quite like that before. |
Monika: Before we hit the somewhat larger town of Mildura we went up North to look at the confluence of the Murray and Darling rivers. This river system reminded me of the Mississippi-Missouri system, where the Missouri is the longer river but the Mississippi name comes first because it was discovered first. Here it is even more interesting. The Murray comes out of the Snowy Mountains and his relatively clear, the Darling, on the other hand, has meandered for a long time across the plains and is muddy. A little downstream from the confluence you can still tell the water from the Murray apart from that of the Darling. Fascinating! |
Bob: Mildura was the next big town, so we halted there for lunch. Like Dubbo out in the boondocks of New South Wales (Wanderung 20), Mildura is clearly the big shopping center for the surrounding large, sparsely settled agricultural region. Fortunately for us, that meant that it had enough cafes and restaurants that a couple of them were open for business despite the fact that it was Easter Sunday. We found an ice cream shop that also had "stuffed spuds" or huge baked potatoes with fillings just like the jacket potatoes that we had enjoyed in England and Wales on Wanderung 25. I dug into one with cheese and tuna fish while Monika enjoyed a chicken and cheese one, so we both were happy. |
Monika: We stopped at Mildura and parked the car to look for lunch. I noticed that an ice-cream parlor also had spuds. I had a spud with chicken (and butter and cheese). It was really big and quite filling. Nice change from our normal lunch. We walked a little more around town, but then decided to keep going. This was a long weekend so many people were on the road. Some concerned couple had set up a "Driver Reviver" stop where they served coffee and tea with a cookie. This all was free, although they did accept donations, which we gladly contributed since it was such a nice place to stop and chat with a typically friendly Australian couple. |
Bob: It was by then after 2:00 p.m. and I was just starting to get antsy about finding a nice place to stay the night. Monika wanted to chance forging ahead but I was dubious until she showed me on the GPS that hotels were in and around the small town of Euston, another hour's drive ahead. So we rolled on through what I would describe as scrub forest until we got to Euston, where we found a room at the Euston Club Motel right on the River Murray. The curious thing about the scrub forest we drove through for about 90 kilometers was that although we saw wire fences alongside the highway, we saw absolutely no grazing animals of any kind, nor any other form of cultivation, nor any sign of human habitation. Somebody clearly must live out there, but it seemed like we were getting on the edge of the Outback where both people and animals are quite sparse. Since the nearest grocery store was 70 kilometers from Euston, we just had our evening snack from the supplies we had brought with and curled up for the night with our books, puzzles, and the computer--the motel did provide free internet service so we could leisurely check email, Facebook, and so forth befpre going to bed. |
Monika: We were hoping to find a place to stay around Euston. Well, it turned out Euston had a big Club that also had a motel attached to it right on the Murray River. As our luck would have it, a family who had reserved a room for 4 nights had not turned up the evening before, and now the room was empty. So we lucked out and really enjoyed a room where we could see the Murray from our window and even watch the reflections of the setting sun. |
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