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Trentham Estate Winery Restaurant
We just love the food and ambiance of this place. It is not long now until we are home. With a lunchtime booking on Thursday at one of our favourites … the restaurant at the Trentham Estate Winery, Trentham Cliffs, and the forecast for ugly, windy weather, we opted to keep moving in short steps rather than long days in poor conditions. So, one-night stops at Deniliquin, Swanhill, Trentham Cliffs and Renmark before our final destination, the Barossa. This has been a particularly chilly leg of our journey.
Trying to head out of Rutherglen over the bridge at Colac we were shattered to find the bridge was closed due to repairs. No detour directions as to the nearest river crossing, so a quick consult with Camps Australia Wide and Google we headed to Deniliquin.
Deniliquin
Our arrival in Deniliquin was heralded by a phenomenal greeting of thousands of corellas. We heard them before we saw them. Suddenly out of nowhere came this huge flock of corellas. The flyby went on for at least 3 minutes. Nonstop! Thousands of them. Unbelievable. They just kept coming.
After passing by they circled around and came back over us. We have witnessed the world-famous bat population leaving at sunset from under
one of the bridges in Austin to feed on insects that are problematic in the farming areas around Austin, Texas. We have also seen the fruit bats leaving Botanic Park in Adelaide to feed on flowering eucalypts around the suburbs … noisy and somewhat ugly. But these pale into insignificance when compared to the size and volume of this destructive flock. We were imagining them flying over as a dawn alarm but thankfully this did not happen.
Very, very chilly and a little moist in Deniliquin.
Swanhill
That damn TomTom took us back roads again. Interesting, new area until suddenly we were on a 1 ½ lane road with vehicles coming our way and a not so fancy looking road shoulder. Breathe in!
A very windy drive. With largely head on winds our thirsty 4x4 was guzzling fuel. Greedy thing. Finally, in town we rugged up and ventured out for a walk. Even chillier here.
With just a couple of nights left and the looming fruit fly quarantine station, we cooked a couple of dishes that would use most of our fruit and veg and get us home without having to purchase more.
Lots
of ducks and coots that rushed anticipatorily towards us whenever we left the van. What does this tell you? No, we didn’t feed them!
Trentham Cliffs … oh no Mildura.
We had carefully worked out our timing, so that we would arrive at the Trentham Cliffs Caravan Park in time to set up, get changed and walk the short walk to lunch. All was going well until we arrived at the caravan park site only to discover it was no longer there. The site had been levelled. Far out! What now?
With not much time to spare and still needing to change we did a u-turn and parked in the winery carpark, jumped into the caravan, got changed and rocked into the winery with enough time for a quick taste and purchase before lunch.
As usual the lunch was stunning even though the restaurant had changed hands since our last visit. Still one of our favourites!
Then across the river for the umpteenth time this trip and into a Big4 for another overnighter.
Still oh so chilly!
Renmark
On to our final night out in the caravan for this trip. Unfortunately,
And closer
Until they are everywhere. our fridge issues have returned. Sometimes it works and sometimes not. Looks like this is a problem to be solved once we are home again. So, we are back to using the Engel. Good thing our freezer is empty at this stage.
We have the uncanny knack of arriving at our new destination just on lunchtime.
We had decided to ditch the last of our soup as we could not guarantee its safety due to our on again off again fridge. One last water front lunch at the Renmark Club. Besides it’s Friday and Greg is use to going out to lunch.
A relaxed afternoon in the gloomy conditions before we set off for the Barossa tomorrow, the home of the caravan.
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