So for a 10 year anniversary (of sorts), we decided to head out for a few nights without Ollie. We had planned on camping both nights, but everything was dependent on the weather. This is the third year of La Nina and frankly we’re a little sick of all the rain and flooding.
The original plan was to head into the Brindabellas on some 4wd trails, but that didn’t work out due to forecast thunderstorms. At the last minute and while very hungover, we decided to head towards Wagga Wagga instead to check out a campsite that had been recommended to us by a friend. We figured if the storm or rain got too bad, we’d just check in at a motel in Wagga and wait it out, or go visit some friends in Junee a little further up the road.
So with the van loaded up with our new giant double swag and a few odds and ends. We set off into a gloomy day with scattered showers, but heading away from what we thought would be most of the rain. We may have been slightly hungover as well, as per tradition.
After a fairly uneventful drive, we got to the Sandy Beach campground in Wantabadgery, just near Wagga Wagga. This is a free camp on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River. It’s fairly basic, with some drop toilets, free bbqs and a couple of picnic tables. The grass areas were very overgrown as well. During our look around the campsite, we found a little area out of the way that required us to traverse a very muddy area. I wasn’t 100% committed to taking it, but the mud on the slope we were on was slippery and didn’t give us much choice other than keep going forward. We got stuck in the mud unable to go forward or backwards, so we needed to go ask for help. Fortunately, the closest campers were in a huge truck with a 15000lb winch, so they carefully set up the truck at the top of the hill before any of the mud and we hooked up to our tow hitch recovery point. It took a bit of pulling, but the van was eventually extracted without much difficulty.
After this mishap, and with the weather looking worse, we headed into town to pick up and firewood and make a decision on what we should do for the night. As soon as we left the campsite, the rains started up much heavier than before, so that convinced us that we were better off in a hotel that night. We drove around and found the Mecure didn’t have a ‘no vacancy’ sign up, so we headed in. They had a couple of very expensive rooms, but given the day we’d had we didn’t argue or look for a cheaper place. Once at the hotel, we chucked on some less muddy clothes and headed out on the town. We started with a few drinks at a nearby pub, then moved on to a five course meal with matched wines at a place called ‘The Charles’.
All up the meal wasn’t exceptional, but we had a good time overall. We had planned on heading out later that night to one of the busier pubs, but once we got back to the hotel we crashed and ended up watching an NRL finals game that was playing that night instead.
The next day we woke up reasonably early and tried to find a cafe for breakfast after checking out. We stopped in at two that were completely full up before finding Jardine’s Cafe on the Wagga main street. It wasn’t very good – Rosie couldn’t finish her breakfast or her coffee. The coffee was so bad she went into Gusman y Gomez and got a $2.50 takeaway cup, which ending up being better!
We filled up the van at much cheaper than Canberra prices ($1.55 vs $1.89 per litre!), and picked up some firewood. We then headed back down the way we came from the night before, but this time heading to Oura River Campground in Oura, which was another free camp with good reviews on the Murrumbidgee. Poking around this camp though we found it to be pretty crowded and very damp after some storms the night before. We tried going down another dirt track up the top of the sites to see if there were additional camps, but ended up finding a lot more mud and simply turning around. Getting winched twice in two days would not have been fun. So given the limited spaces available there, we headed back to Sandy Beach to check it out again and see if it was in the same condition.
Getting to Sandy Beach we found it pretty much as we’d seen it the day before. We drove around a bit, avoiding a large ‘ute-focused’ party that was happening in the downstream side and ended up setting up camp on the river a short distance away from our rescuers from the day before.
Camp was set up very quickly without Ollie helping, and we had a couple of beers in the emerging sunshine before we knew it. We’d both bought some books in Wagga, so we spent some quiet time reading and chatting as the weather got nicer and nicer.
We had a good chat with one of the campers near us and met her dog, Bella, who took an immediate liking to me and Rosie. That afternoon was spent with few drinks watching the birds and the sunset and the river in front of a fire – overall a very pleasant afternoon. The only sour point was the occasional gunshot making us jump from the big party campsite downriver, but we eventually got used to that as well.
Rosie’s laughing that afternoon probably made everyone aware of our presence, though she eventually got it under control.
That night we made up some pasta with chirizo and homemade vegetable sauce.
The night got a little chilly, but some red wine, warm clothes and a bigger fire solved that. Another NRL final was on that night, with some campers listening to it very loudly.
Our relatively quiet music was nothing in comparison to the gunshots, cheering and loud sports commentators coming from other groups. That said, they were pretty much all packed up and done by 11pm, so we got to sleep in a fairly quiet space.
That morning we woke up to a massive amount of fog and dew across the campgrounds and river. Luckily we’d moved the swag to underneath our awning to keep it somewhat dry. Breakfast that morning was bacon, eggs, halloumi and avocado on wraps.
We packed up fairly quickly and then went to say a final goodbye to our neighbours/rescuers. We had a poke around their very well set up Isuzu truck as well, with a final goodbye to Bella the little French bulldog. We drove back without any stops, coming back to a tired Ollie, exhausted grandma and a grumpy cat.
Boring stuff:
This was the first trip we’d made with the new 15L centre console fridge and the ARB 60L fridge both running at the same time. Given our old AGM battery is getting on 5 years old and there wasn’t a lot of sun to top up the batteries, I wasn’t sure whether we’d have enough power to get through the night. Or at least, have enough power to heat and froth Rosie’s milk for her coffee in the morning. Fortunately the battery didn’t really notice the extra constant load, and the rooftop solar did a good job charging the battery even with both fridges running. The DC/DC charger was running on the way down from Canberra due to a lack of sunshine, but in the end that probably wasn’t necessary.
Our swag was bought earlier in the year as a quick and simple way of getting away for just one and two people, without needing to move seats in and out of the van. Given how massive this one is though, time will tell if we keep using it. The mattress wasn’t very comfortable despite the additional topper, it’s difficult to get in and out of, it’s hard to get changed in it, there’s limited space to store things and it didn’t feel that much warmer than our tent overall. Maybe it would be better with just one occupant? I don’t think it saved us much time either compared with our instant up tent, or even a basic dome tent.
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