SA – Murray – Heading Home

We were again greeted by a stunning sunrise this morning which made it even harder to leave this great place. Early morning is always a great time to take photos because the water tends to be very still and the birds are quite active. We saw a huge number of water birds congregated on a small part of the river, I can only assume that the fish were all hanging around there to attract the birds.

We took lots of photos, said our farewell to the neighbours and headed off to Hopetoun in the central west of Victoria. The drive is again quite boring which was not helped by the GPS telling us porkies as to how long it would take!

We arrived at Hopetoun in the the early afternoon and unlike out last stay there had a lot of grey nomads for company,

​The camp site has a paid area with an arty theme and a variety of innovative accommodation options to showcase the Mallee environment (The Stable and the Grain Silo among others) and also powered caravan sites at a good rate. Out batteries were fully charged courtesy of the great weather so we opted for the unpaid area on the other side of the lake. Lake Lascelles has some sort of input pipe which maintains the level even in these drought conditions and it is used mainly for waterskiing. There are a couple of reservoirs around the lake, presumably to provide the town water supply.

Hopetoun is yet another struggling country town and the camp brings much needed visitors to the area. There are clean flushing toilets, showers and squeaky clean BBQs and plenty of sites around the lake. The free camping area has a donation box and I hope it is filling well because this is one of the best free campsites we have come across.

Yet another glorious sunset brought out trip to an end other than the longish and boring drive home up the Western Highway.