Day 3

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Today was the real test of the plan. Our longest day circa 228 kms, longest between fuel stops and the most locks (4). There was a general feeling of foreboding! Heightened by the fact that because of the big day Brooksie had to forego his usual breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and grilled tomatoes. Instead there was a lot of complaining about skim milk and Vita Brits.
As always the Murray River is spectacular and this stretch is much wider, and more populated than what we had experienced on the other trips. We arrived at Wentworth without incident, although the woman at the bakery store wouldn’t give Brooksie her name even though she’d asked for his when he ordered coffee. We had a chat to a couple who had purportedly come down the river from Albury. We are sceptical as there is no water upstream of Echuca.
I rang the lockmaster at Lock 9 (Kevin). He felt it unlikely that we could get to the lock in 5 minutes. Took me a while to work out it was the wrong lockmaster. I rang lock 10 (Danny). He was knocking off from 11.00 till 1. It was 11.10 and he agreed to keep the lock open for us. We may have exceeded the 4 knot limit.
Generally the day went like a dream. Boat fuel gauges are as reliable as Brooksie, so we were never entirely sure of how much fuel we had. The Murray turned it on for us, we scared the emus away as we pulled up for lunch on a sandbar and then headed towards Devil’s Elbow. After negotiating the other 3 locks with extremely friendly lockmasters especially lock 8 where he was courteous enough to tell us to watch out for snakes.
We arrived at Devils Elbow around 5 and it was just sensational. Wilko rated it the best campsite ever. There were tracks for almost every type of animal imaginable. Opposite the campsite were these beautiful sedimentary cliffs. You have never seen so many pelicans and the stars were brilliant. The only issue is that my boat is slowly sinking, but I was cheered by watching Brooksie getting tipsy on red wine and knowing he’d pay the price tomorrow. As per usual we had dealt with all the major issues like the RC and Trump.

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