We have had a very relaxing week in a quiet bush camp right on the King River, very shady, which is just as well as it has been quite hot.
The facilities are basic with one long extension cord for power, no water and one combined toilet and shower, but it would be hard to beat the environment. Most of the time we are the only people camped here with occasionally only a tent well away from us. The day after we arrived we drove to Lake William Hovell which is at the end of the King Valley for a BBQ lunch followed by a bit of 4WD in Deen’s Jeep.
The next day we went to Paradise Falls for a picnic lunch followed by a 500 metre return walk to the falls. We had to use stools to sit on so to eat lunch we could be in the shade. Deen used a new portable gas BBQ she had just purchased and it worked a treat and was easy to clean. It was a delightful walk but the hundreds of steps were a bit tiring. In the photo below you will see two faint white lines in the centre of the photo, they are the falls.
The views along the walk to the falls were excellent, across the King Valley to the mountains behind.
Wednesday was a bit rainy so we went to the Mountain View Hotel in Whitfield for an excellent meal in very pleasant surroundings, well worth a visit. The weather was heating up so we mainly stayed around camp and relaxed but we fitted in a BBQ lunch at Moyhu in the Lions Park, it was disappointing that we missed the lions though.
Today we went to Gracebrook Winery for lunch and had the best sharing platter that either of us had been served before. There was heaps of food – four different cold meats, three dips, lots of bread and biscuits, olive oil for dipping, olives, apple (2 types), raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, cherries, watermelon, walnuts, pickled walnuts, tomatoes, hard boiled egg, celery, carrot, and lettuce. Most of the food was home made at the winery with the bread and cheese coming from the cheese factory at Milawa. The only reject was pickled eggplant which was a bit like eating rubber. We ate out on the lawn where it was cool under the trees with a wonderful view.
The Gracebrook wines that we tasted before lunch were very good and we both ended up buying a mixed dozen. Tomorrow is out last day here and we are thinking of going to the Brewery just down the road for a tasting and a meal. Then it will be off to Morning Glory on the Murray to see if it will be OK for the November camp, our 50th November camp.
There are still a few of us that can remember that first camp at Waratah Bay when it was just a bush camping spot. This is our camp in our first camper, a Sunwagon.
There were a lot of people at the first camp and we had a campfire each evening as has become our tradition. Not many photos were taken but this one survived, try to put a name to the people.
