By the time we got going an hour later it was a balmy 18 degrees brrrrr!!
We drove through Barmera and more vineyards.
We headed onwards through the sunshine to Renmark. It was hard to believe we had made it such a long way already but were still only halfway through this epic journey :)
We went over the historic 1927 bridge over the mighty Murray River on the far side of Renmark and under the big Dunlop Tyre at Yamba quarantine station.
The road was good, flanked by vineyards, nut farms and citrus orchards as we crossed the border into Victoria at 10am. It was nowhere as grand as the NT/SA border, plus the speed limit was now 100kph, instead the open limit in NT and the 130kph in SA! At least it had warmed up a little to 26 degrees!
Laura was squinting because she'd sprayed insect repellent onto her face and her sunnies had melted. Yes really!
We drove now through vast fields of waving golden wheat and barley and the rich green rows of grapevines and orchards. It was very pretty but in a totally different way to the arid rugged beauty of central Australia.
We went through lots of small rural townships with names like Speed, Brim and Lah to name a few.
We stopped off for lunch and were beyond excited to see an actual sandwich bar that sold real handmade food instead of the service station prepackaged sangers we'd become accustomed to! Honestly you'd think we'd been off the grid for two years instead of two weeks!
We made it to Horsham at 3pm and set up in the shade of a big gum. We had some trouble unhitching the van for some reason; probably due to concrete hard dried Oodnadatta mud caught somewhere! After a few well placed bangs with the hammer, coupled with Laura jumping on the tailgate, we finally separated them! Despite our best efforts at Roxby Downs there was still a fair bit of mud (now rock hard) clinging to various bits of the Triton and the van. We knew we were going to have to get it all off with a high pressure hose as soon as possible to avoid scratching and potential further damage.
Steve then went off to stock up on a few extras at Woolies (OMG an actual supermarket!). Dan had a great time in the pool and checked out the cool Games Room and Jumping Pillow while the dogs and Laura relaxed in the shade.
Sunshine's paw was healing well and Laura cleaned and redressed it. What a tough cookie :)
Steve came back with some early Christmas pressies too!
BBQ chicken dinner and then early to bed.
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