THE FIRST DAY - Friday 9 JULY 2010
We said goodbye to Josh who was the only one home and the doggies – I gave them each a treat, and off we went in our fully packed up old jalopy of a van. We left Vermont about 9.10 am hoping to miss some of the traffic. We filled up with petrol at Craigebourne. For me it was hard to believe that we were finally off on a trip we had talked about for so long. I kept thinking of the kids and the doggies and Nana hoping everything will be alright while we are gone. We stopped in Mangalore – we looked for a stop No. 260 that was in the book which sounded nice but discovered it doesn’t exist anymore but we had morning tea anyway in a dead end road that was quite pretty with trees all around. Not quite the start we had in mind – it can only get better from here. When we got into Shepperton we went to the SPC factory only to discover that it wasn’t were it used to be. We asked a lady walking along the street if she knew where it was she told us its near Kmart in the middle of Shep town. Ok so we headed back into Shep and actually found the SPC outlet really easily which was a plus. We bought a good amount of supplies such as tins of tuna, salmon, small fruit boxes, herbs, nuts and lollies. This should keep us going for awhile. We then headed off and discovered theres a Campbells outlet as well so we had to stop. The lady gave us some free hot soup – pea and ham – very nice, just what we needed as we hadn’t had lunch yet and it was about 2pm. We bought some soups and off we continued. We found this beautiful quiet spot along the Murray River on the Victorian side near Tocumwal. We set up camp and went for a bit of a walk. There was quite a good track and I had an urge to go for a bike ride along it so I did. It was lovely and peaceful. The birds beginning to roost for the night and the sun going down. When I got back Graeme had made tea. We sat outside and ate. We then attempted to get TV which we did – amazing. We watched our favourite shows for a Friday night. Then went to bed. It was a good first day.