ANZAC day weekend - Eldorado 2013

ANZAC long weekend saw us take the van out for possibly the last time before winter. We decided a short trip to Eldorado would be a nice break from the hustle and bustle

We have been to the Gemstone Caravan Park in Eldorado a few times now and every time the park is the same, Clean, well maintained and quiet. We really love that its only 10 mins from the Hume Highway yet seems to be virtually unknown and therefore relaxing.

From Eldorado its only a short 30min drive to either Beachworth or Wangaratta, both of which we visited over the weekend. Brown Brothers Winery is also only a short drive away and stock a great Tokay only available at the cellar door.

Right behind the caravan park is the Reedy Creek where alluvial gold can be found along with various gemstones. With my renewed miners right and my pans and sieves i did manage to spend some time fossicking however not much was found other than some well worn glass and a couple of flakes of Gold. The gold did not photograph to well so you will have to trust me the stones i found did but no cutters like last time

Also Nearby to the caravan park is the Swinging Bridge and the Eldorado Dredge. Looking at the photos around the town and in the pub its amazing what this dredge did to the valley in the search for Gold

Sara’s parents, who also came along, have just purchased a Minelab Xterra 705 metal detector and they were keen to have a look around also however there was no real expectation of finding a nugget here. They did have fun learning the machine and digging up other peoples waste

Mostly the weekend was about relaxing and we did plenty of that with the park providing firewood and portable camp fires, one of which found a permanent spot outside our van.

We also spent one afternoon taking the parents out to the old Chinese gardens in search of relics we got to play with the car in 4WD but no relics were found

That will probably be it for a while with the van now due to a good clean and then the covers will go on.

Day Trip - Erskine Falls

Not a trip as such but as winter approaches we have decided to try and get out more on day/weekend trips rather than our normal weeks long trips.

Today we packed up the Colorado and headed on down to Lorne and the Erskine Falls. We picked a great day for it with the sun shining most of the day and the weather being mostly warm.

 

We headed out from Melbourne to Lorne first, via the start of the Great Ocean Road, stopping on the beach. As soon as we approached the water line, looking for shells, we started noticing common sea glass, ie beer bottles :). I mentioned to the kids to start looking for Blue sea glass to see how they might go and after some searching they found some. We also found clear, green and some ceramics. We didn't collect much in the way of quantity but we all had fun looking.

After this we made our way into Lorne and onto the road heading up into the Otways to Erskine Falls. A quick stop at the Blanket Leaf picnic area showed us where we would be returning for lunch, but first the falls.

 

I selected this destination as it was identified as being close to the carpark. I really did not waht to be walking through the hills for an hour looking for the waterfall. The falls in this case were, with the upper falls lookout being only meters from the carpark. The lower falls viewing platform, however, was quite a descent down many stairs. The stairs were well maintained and there were rails all the way to the bottom. The lookout, and the falls were magnificent and we spent quite a bit of time down here taking photos and looking around. I think we were also delaying the ascent back up the stairs :)

 

 

 

The climb back up only served to highlight how unfit we all are :(

 

After the falls we returned to the picnic grounds where we had a BBQ lunch, with Bianca manning the tongs. The park was nice and quiet, and i could see it being very popular in the summer.

 

After the falls and lunch, we returned to Lorne, where we took a walk down the main street and the foreshore, which was packed with people having the same idea, making the most of a great day.

 

Overall the kids loved the day out and we will be planning many more daytrips in the near future.

Darwin 2012–Alice Springs to Home

Well, Unfortunately the trip had to come to an end. On the way up i took heaps of photos and tried for a blog post per day. As what seems my normal trend on the way home, considering we are again traveling the reverse route, i have not taken as many photos, or updated the blog as much.

G’Day Mate turned out to be a great, quiet park with clean amenities. We stayed here 2 nights and really enjoyed the break from driving. We gave it a rating of 4/5.

Leaving Alice springs was nothing like when we arrived. On the way up to Darwin it was around 38/39 deg but as we left to go south it was only 17deg and raining. The rain was to stay with us for most of our drive south to Melbourne, and rather than the highs of 41deg on our northward journey we did not see the temperature rise above 21 deg on our journey south.

We ended up heading straight home rather than venture out to new areas, however we tried to target new parks. We stayed at Cadney Park station again, and surprisingly considering the Nomad traffic heading north, we were only one of 3 vans at the park that night. The flys were still there but not in their previous numbers. One highlight of this trip was having to pull right off the Sturt Highway to make way for some wide loads, 8.5m of houses. We encountered 4 of them heading into Port Augusta. We also managed to obtain the Colorado’s first stone chip in nearly 20,000km of trips.

On the second night we stayed at Port Germein. This is where we had lunch on our second day north. Unfortunately the rain set in and it blew a gale all night. That said the park was great, nice and clean and close to a nice little pub where we enjoyed a great, recommended, meal. I was planning to do a bit of fishing but the weather was bad. It was raining, very windy and the water was very choppy. I believe the jetty would not of been a very nice place to be.

From Port Germein we headed through Adelaide and on to the Bordertown caravan Park where we made our last stop. This campsite proved to be the nosiest for the trip as it was situated right on the main road. Other than  the noise the park was good with very clean amenities.

From there it was a short trip home. The Colorado performed flawlessly throughout the trip, however we took a big fuel economy hit on the last couple of days due to heavy head winds. The final figures from the Gas Cubby app are below.

 

Thank you for following the latest of our Caravan Holidays.