Days 54 & 55: Melbourne to Wagga Wagga to Dubbo

Our journey wasn't over, Melbourne is still 1,600 kilometres from our home in Ipswich. So this week was a week of driving, but we did have some interesting stops along the way.

Our first stop this Sunday was for church. We'd planned to go to a church not far from the caravan park, but we were ready to go too early for that. A strange problem! It seemed silly to be sitting around twiddling our thumbs when we could be driving, so we Googled intensely looking for a church service further along our route that we would get to if we left very soon. We happened upon Hume Presbyterian Church in Craigeburn, a newish suburb on the very northern edge of Melbourne. It was a modern, welcoming church (we got welcome bags with chocolate!) and we enjoyed our time there, but had our eyes on the road, so didn't stay for the shared lunch afterwards.

I've got hardly any photos from this day, just a road shot. We stopped for lunch at a lovely park just off the highway in Broadford, but the van was parked on such an angle that we used non-slip matting on the dining table.

We parked for the night at Wagga Wagga at a free camp by the might Murrumbidgee River. The free camp had only a small toilet block, and one of those wasn't flushing well. I'm guessing that most people were using their own onboard toilets, because there were many, many caravans and motorhomes there, but not very much traffic to and from the loos. It would have been a pretty spot, but somehow all the vans wrecked that a bit.

Parked near us was a family that appeared to be moving, but didn't have the money for accommodation. They slept in their two overly full cars, even though that was against the rules of this free free site. It sounds like they were headed somewhere (they were close enough that we could overhear their conversations), but didn't have sufficient funds to buy petrol to get any further along on their journey until later in the week. Cost of living is causing a national crisis, as the media tells us almost daily now. This nation has cruised along fairly comfortably (as a whole) for many years now, and that's meant people's expectations have increased. Because we duck in and out of the country we've noticed increases perhaps more than those who haven't left the country. In the 23 years we've been away it has continually gotten more expensive to live here (significantly more than Japan). Apparently prices have risen more sharply in the last couple of years and certain the rental situation is crazy. It's sad to see the results of this and it rightly makes us uncomfortable.

Murrumbidgee River, second longest river in Australia

The next morning we drove into Wagga Wagga and walked along the river for a short while. They've created a lovely park and community area (with wide path) along the river in the middle of town. We walked on Wagga Beach (river beach).

Wagga Beach

We stopped for lunch in a service station car park on the outskirts of a small town of West Wyalong, then proceeded north. We drove through a few towns that used to be significantly bigger than they are now, this is because gold had been found in the area in the mid 1800s. 

Wagga Beach

We stopped in Parkes Information Centre to use their loos and check about visiting The Dish. "The Dish" is a Radio Telescope north of Parkes. Its claim to fame is that it captured most of the images for the first walk on the moon. A fictionalised version of this story is told in the Australian classic movie "The Dish", hence the nickname of the telescope. (Watch it, if you haven't, it's good entertainment!)

The Dish. We did not expect to get this close to it!

Our goal for this day was to get to Dubbo because we'd booked tickets to spend the next day at the famous Dubbo Zoo. After a bit of a Google maps adventure (trying to find a grocery store...who knew that Dubbo was so large and had multiple large such stores?) we eventually got food and parked for the night at a caravan park. It was the first time we'd arrived after dark, but thankfully set-up wasn't hard, and indeed pretty routine by this time in our journey! We encountered another ammenities block with loud radio playing inside all day and night. This time it was just chatty stuff, not AFL, but still, it wouldn't have been my choice of station if I'd had a choice. Still, it was a nice spot to pull up. Lovely to be so close to the toilets again.

Mentally, though, this was a little bit of a tough week. I was getting tired of the constant moving and yearning to get home; going through the motions to get there, though, was a bit of a strain. We'd not had a "day off" for a couple of weeks by this time and were pretty weary, in body and soul. Thankfully we'd planned a couple of special things to do this week to help us keep up the momentum, and the zoo was one of those.