Welcome to the view out of our window for most of our four day drive from Sydney to Adelaide. Mile after mile of flat, dry, almost featureless land. It may sound boring but it was actually mesmirisingly beautiful. When clouds did break the sky, there was a regularity to them as if someone had cut and pasted them onto a blue background in Photoshop. Our third day was our longest – we drove 500km through three states, visited numerous playground and snack stops, and watched Rapunzel and Despicable Me 4 times each! The kids were amazing. They took the long hours in their stride and are both asking when we can buy our own giant RV.
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After leaving Hay, our stopping point on our second night of the drive, we drove to Balranald, briefly crossed into Outback NSW (we still can’t believe it took us 3 days of driving to reach outback NSW!) and then headed south into Victoria via Tooleybuc and the Murray River, before turning west to the Pink Lakes and South Australia. One of the highlights of the day was crossing the Murray River. The Murray River is Australia’s answer to the Mississippi. I’ve grown up watching movies about it, learning about it in history lessons, hearing about the damaging effects of agriculture, drought and overuse, but I’ve never seen it. So that was a thrill for me. Finding a little park along the banks of the river with great equipment and gorgeous gum trees was an even bigger highlight.
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Once into Victoria the land seemed even drier. Well except for all those gullies, low lying areas and creeks filled with water after recent floods. OK so apart from the flooding the land was really dry.
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The major difference between Victoria and NSW? Well phone coverage actually. We lost Optus phone coverage two hours outside of Sydney apart from within the small towns. Within 5km of the Victoria border the network appeared and even in the middle of no where 80km from the nearest town we still had signal.
Our fist rest stop in Victoria was the little town of Ouyen, famous for hosting Victoria’s annual Best Vanilla Slice competition.
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The Vanilla Slice is a layer of thickened vanilla custard wedged between two slices of pastry and topped with icing. It’s been the sad addiction of many famous Australians, even our top athletes! Over ten years ago the then Victorian Premier professed a love of vanilla slice and set out to find the best vanilla slice in the state. On a tour of the area he sampled Ouyen’s offerings and was so impressed he declared that a yearly contest to find the best vanilla slice would be held in Ouyen. So it’s a pretty good town to stop in for lunch at a bakery!
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In case you’re wondering, the kids slept in a queen sized bed that was above Colin’s head in the above shot. This is where we slept, which converted to a couch during the day, and the bathroom/kitchen area.
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The ladder? Well that’s supposed to be used to get up to the kids bed but it also doubles as an obstacle course and jail!
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Finally after driving for three days and promising Miss Hayley we’d visit there for weeks, we reached headed for the Pink Lakes!
The Pink Lakes are part of the Murray Sunset National Park in far north-west Victoria. They’re salt lakes and due to an algae in the water they appear bright pink in colour in late summer. Where else would you take a 3yr old princess but to see pink water!
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The vegetation surrounding the lake is completely stunted by the salt waters of the lake.
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It’s also bakingly hot. We spent 20 minutes walking around the lake before Hayley went into complete meltdown from the heat. I joined her a few seconds later! The sun was just too bright to really capture the colours of the lake and sand. Everything was bleached of colour.
Here’s our van, miles and miles from nowhere.
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We’re 15km from the nearest small town, 65km from Ouyen and over 100km to a large town. The lakes are said to offer a spectacular view of the stars at night and considering how far you are from anywhere I’d believe them. We would have liked to stay overnight to see all the kangaroos come down to the water and the stars but we didn’t have enough water and food with us to camp in the middle of an arid dessert. The camp ground here has no water, no toilets and definitely no little shop!
Still it was definitely worth stopping here for a short visit. The kids were a lot more impressed by the crunchy and sometimes slippery pink salt we were walking on than the water so we talked a lot about that and followed animal tracks in the salt. The salt was really pink!
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Next it was onto Lameroo in South Australia to stop the night in the caravan park. At $18/night for a powered site it was the cheapest camping ground we’ve stayed in yet in Australia. There’s nothing here but a toilet block, some nice grass and a group of amazing people. The other caravaners are all early semi-retirees who’ve joined the grey nomad fleet a few years ahead of schedule. They were all stopped in Lameroo to help with the crop picking for a few months in order to fund further travel.
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Every afternoon the chairs come out, the beers are opened and they kick back to chat. We hadn’t even driven in before they were eager to offer advice and pull up a chair for us to join the circle.
We might have missed seeing the stars at the Pink Lakes but they were almost as spectacular at Lameroo.
On the fourth day we woke to a leisurely 250km drive to Adelaide. We were in by lunch, had the van returned and ready to hang out with friends.
Trip Report
Total Distance: 1450km. Where we drove: Leaving Sydney we followed highway 31, then highway 20. The first night we stopped at Gundagai, the second Hay. After Hay we followed highway 20 until Balranald where we turned south towards Swan Hill. At Tooleybuc on the NSW/VIC border we crossed the Murray onto highway B12 all the way into South Australia. 100km from Adelaide we turned onto the M1 at Tailem Bend which took us right into Adelaide. Fuel: 5 tanks, with petrol costing on average $1.40/L for diesel. At $90 for a tank of fuel the campervan wasn’t the most economical on petrol! But we actually got better miles out of it than our 4WD (a very sad fact that will see our car in the mechanics when we get back to Sydney to work out why!). Nightly accommodation costs: Gunadai – $36, Hay – $28, Lameroo – $18 Who we rented through: We had a Britz campervan that we rented through StandbyCars on a relocation deal at $5 per day. If you do rent through Britz it’s worth remembering that their vans have Big 4 caravan park membership that gives you a 10% discount on accommodation. Would we do the drive again? Absolutely. The van was amazing and we’d love to do it again. 1400km in 4 days with kids who aren’t really used to driving those distances was doable because of the van. The kids had DVD players, heaps of space and the van allowed us to stop frequently so the kids could play in the back. Another day or two would have been a lot better to break up the drive but it was fine. We’ve since driven from Adelaide to Melbourne in a much smaller van and even thought the drive was shorter it was a lot harder with a smaller van.
