Day 4

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This morning Wilko was leaning down to pour some water when he cried out in pain and collapsed to the ground. Now everyone who knows Wilko knows he doesn’t take a dive, although in this case it was close to washing up time. It turns out his back was gone. I did my best to make him comfortable, but as you all know this is closely run adventure. There is a pact that the boys have but it is possible we hadn’t told Paul. While I was assisting him, Brooksie and Mike had already agreed to leave him behind with a tent, a sleeping bag and a fishing rod. Luckily, for Paul, he seemed to improving.
I topped up the oil in the old 2 strike and we headed off. Adam was in the navigators chair. We had decided to run the boats dry so we could work out the mileage, so when Adam suggested we take a short cut I said no let’s go the long way so we could tell the correct mileage. Before you know it we felt the subtle bump of an outboard keg hitting sand at 40kph. Luckily we slowed down before actually got grounded. A quick look at the map revealed that the “shortcut” was the Murray proper and we were now in an oxbow lake. I tilted up the outboard and it quickly became apparent that I’d forgotten to put the lid on the oil tank. I did my best to clean up our mini Exon Valdez spillage and Adam and I pushed the boat to deeper water.
There was no sign of the others so we pushed on to our next fuel stop at Customs a house but there was still no sign of them. I have expected to find a tent, sleeping bags and a couple of fishing rods. Apparently they had been sighted. We called the lock ahead and were told that they were waiting there. All I can say is thank god Brooksie has his own business and doesn’t need to follow instructions. We all met up again at Customs House but had missed the lock so we had a leak surely lunch with in sight of the lock and then headed to Renmark. Picked up a few supplies and had a beer at the famous Renmark Club which has won best club in the Southern Hemisphere in 2012,13,14,16 and 17. Apparently in 2018 it was narrowly beaten by Central Coast Leagues.
As we got closer to Berri the potential for campsites got worse. However we found a lovely spot other than the homestead across the river, the spotlight from the quarry and the couple that came down to the river in a ute for a “bonk”. We had a swim off the back of the boat and Brooksie pulled the old “ive dropped my soap routine”. Steak sambos and then an early night (as always).

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