Day 39

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St Paddy’s Day and we hit the road with the aim to call at Lake Boga, a World War II Flying base repair depot.
Just a short drive and we were outside the museum before it opened at 9:30am.

We headed into the bunker when it opened, this originally was the radio room, the lesson learned by the bombing of Darwin, where communication was lost to bombing, it is important to keep the radio centre up and running.
This houses a lot of memorabilia and photos of the base when it flourished from 1943 to 1948 when it closed.
It was set up so far inland to prevent it being bombed by ships carrying aircraft. It was also on the secret list, for most of it’s life as the Catalina flying boats came in for repairs, it served other flying boats from the USA.

It had up to 1000 RAAF Personal as well as a large contingent of WAAF during the period of operation.
They have housed at the centre, a Catalina Flying boat, undergoing restoration, presently.

From here we headed on towards Echuca, another river port with a lot of history. We crossed into NSW to book into the park at Merloo, it is ten minutes from Echuca.

After setting up we headed into town to have a quick look around. Again the town relied on the Paddle wheelers to assist in opening the country up for supplies in and out.

This is reflected in the historic river port and the buildings alongside the river still in the earlier historic design, with signs on them explaining the history of the building, including ownership down the time.

We headed back home to relax and eat, with no travel the next day a choice to sleep in tomorrow.

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