There are various free camps along the Murray River on both the NSW & VIC sides. While on the NSW side we decided to have a quick look at one of theirs, as we drove off the highway into the camping area the first sign we came to had that many rules on it about what you weren't allowed to do, that we drove straight back out & continued on to Mildura. Mildura is a lovely town, it has all of the shops you could possibly need, beautiful houses & grape vines everywhere.
The first free campsite we checked out was the Karodoc sandbar area, while the sites were okay, we decide it wasn't really for us. We headed back towards Mildura to check out a couple of others, Kings Billabong & Psyches Bend. In the end we chose Psyches Bend. It had nice large designated camp sites, with a picnic table & fire ring in most of them. It was popular with caravans, but was nicely spread out, we had a choice of about 6 campsites all right on the edge of the Murray River. And they were free & with no rules other than the normal common courtesy things!! We couldn't believe it, if this was QLD or NSW you would have to pay for sure.
So we set the trailer up & got ready for the night. As we cracked our first beer a houseboat motored up the river in front of our campsite, it really was a lovely place to sit & relax. Mat put in the yabby pots & went for a fish & I chased around some more birds with my camera (see the Mallee Ringneck photos below).
The next morning was the buy a new car fridge morning!! But after that we treated ourselves to a pub lunch to drown our sorrows about needing a new fridge!! We went for a bit of a drive around Mildura on our way back to camp & then enjoyed the sunset over a few beers & cooked up our Bush Rissoles.
The next day we drove further along the Murray River up from our campsite & discovered even more campsites, a boat ramp, more houseboats & some flash restaurants on the other side of the river that the houseboats moored at to go in and have their posh lunch!!
When we got back to camp the wind had really picked up & it was starting to get quite chilly!! We had been really lucky with the weather so far, that we were feeling it! We had decided earlier in the day that tonight would be our last night on the Murray & we were going to head further south to the Murray Sunset National Park to Pink Lakes (check these out in our next post). So we set about packing up what we could that afternoon, it was too windy to light the fire so we packed all of that gear up as well. We made some Beef Chilli for dinner (check out that post too) & ended up in bed a bit early because it was so cold in the wind. The next morning we said goodbye to the Murray & set off to Pink Lakes.
Overall our Murray River camp at Psyches bend was great & definitely worth doing. The worst part is getting used to daylight savings!! It is a bit foreign to us Queenslanders!!! It feels really strange it not getting daylight until 7.30am in the morning and not getting dark until 9pm at night, it does make cooking dinner on the fire a bit easier, but still feels weird!!
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