Echuca

We left our camp on the Murray at Nyah Vinifera Park & headed south to Swan Hill. Swan Hill looks like another very nice town on the Murray River, but after getting our photo with the big Murray Cod we decided to venture on towards Echuca.

Wow another great town & God it was busy. We saw there was a free camp just out of town in our Camps Australia Wide book. We decided to check it out. As we drove in it looked like there were a fair few permanent camps which isn't ever really a good sign, but we managed to find a quiet spot on the banks of the Murray again. Seems to be getting a habit, but who can resist such awesome free camps. We set up in record time & went back into town to explore. It was even busier, we drove around for 10 minutes just to get a park crazy! Echuca has a great mix of all the essential big shops but heaps of smaller touristy places as well. We wandered the Main Street & found ourselves at a pub for lunch. Surprise surprise. We then headed back out to camp  to watch all the water skiers go back & forwards in front of camp. 

The next day we stayed at camp & fished, cooked, read, relaxed & took photos of the birds around camp. It was a very quiet Sunday. 

On the Monday morning we decided to test our winch as we are making our way towards the high country & guess what it didn't work properly. It had been having issues with the controllers, but this time it would not winch the cable back in, great, time to look for a replacement. We headed back into town to talk to the various 4WD shops, but with not much luck in that they couldn't fit one until at least Thursday. Echuca is a nice spot but we didnt want to wait around that long. We called a few other shops in nearby big towns & ended up booking it in at Shepparton on Friday, so we would be able to move camp closer. Then we finished having a proper look around town without the crowds, although it was still busy. We did our grocery shopping, had a good look in the main street & ventured into many of the great little shops including a fantastic book shop, lolly shop, chocolate shop, cheese shop, camping shops, the list goes on. We then grabbed some drinking water at the information centre & decided we may as well head into NSW as we were this close & crossed the bridge over the Murray into Moama, we did only get fuel & come back, but it did make us feel a bit closer to home ha ha, we then headed back to camp. The next day we packed up & moved again, can you guess which river we ended up camped on next? Stay tuned to find out!! Oh by the way the weather has been fantastic!!! Loving it!