Well … it was going to be Bonnie Doon for Easter. The caravan park up there managed to ‘lose’ our booking. Probably because they figured they could make more money by having regular guests, instead of discounted Nomads.
Ahh well … when the drought returns and they need the business I don’t reckon we’ll be paying them a visit then either!
Lake Waranga Caravan Park.
Waranga Beach Road
Waranga Shores. A couple of minutes North of Rushworth.
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23 of us made the trip away for Easter. I found this park to be a pleasant surprise. I confess to having low expectations, for no particular reason.
Being Easter by the lake I expected to be greeted at sunrise each morning by the sound of V8 boats on the water. Not so! The boat ramp was a short trip from the park and the water around the park is too shallow for boats to be in too close.
A caravan park at Easter is supposed to be full of yobs up until 5am singing karaoke … there wasn’t much of that either … unless the Nomads were the yobs.
The days were sunny, the nights were cold, as were the beers. The park owner thought it would be a great idea to have a few cockies screech at all hours and also a rooster to wake us up each morning. I’m struggling to find anything else to pick on…
Thursday 3pm saw me sneak out of work early only to be stuck in the crush of traffic. Only the bit between the Eastern and the Ring Road gave us any grief. Turning from Bulleen Road into Manningham Road was complete gridlock until Rosanna Road. That 1km section took 40 minutes. Everywhere else was smooth sailing.
This being the first real stretch of the Prado’s legs with the van on the back I was pretty happy with it. It’s similar to the Rexton with a dead spot between 80 & 100, but its easier to manage and punch through it to get to the 100. I did find myself fiddling with the gears continuously to assist the engine though. Having a direct gearbox instead of a rubberband means that you can react to what the engine is doing much better. I prefer it anyway … although the Rexton does seem to do it just as easy without all the faffing about. The Rex seems to be happy in 5th and quickly drop to 4th if needed whereas the Prado has to be manually put in 4th (and the manual says leave it in 4th all the time) every time there’s a slight hill. I’ll leave the gearbox alone for the trip to Inverloch as I would for the Rex and see how it goes.
On the Friday we didn’t do much of anything. The serenity was only broken by the continuous ringing of Rob’s phone by Danielle checking up on him. I swear he only got 1 beer in on Friday.
Saturday we went in to Shepparton for a bit of a squizz after visiting the market in the morning. I wanted to grab some stuff from Bunnings and we had a great lunch at the RSL. $9 mains and they were great. Hardly anybody there either.
Sunday saw me ripping apart the car and fitting a CB and some wiring for a dual battery setup and an Anderson plug. That took much longer than expected as there’s just not much room to hide anything in the Prado.
Monday we just hung around the park mostly. The kids borrowed a kayak from Di and had a paddle. Their technique meant that the slight breeze was determining their direction and they were quickly over it. Hannah took the excuse for a swim though. I went and found a geocache and stumbled across a fire observation tower that could be climbed.
Being close to sunset and having a magnificent view from up there (since there’s no other hills around) I went back and grabbed Sue, Kellie & Hannah and took them back to the lookout. We missed the sunset by about a minute.
Blake, Hannah, Kellie & Sam were keen to make the journey again for sunrise, Tuesday … although only Sam & Blake made it out of bed! We got up there with plenty of time before the sunrise … Blake’s first. Great view, but man it’s cold up there.
An uneventful trip home. Stopped at an SES driver reviver as I had a hankering for coffee. Another short stop for lunch. No traffic hassles at all, even though we were expecting the worst. Seemed like everybody got stuck around the Westgate/Bolte and that smoothed everything out everywhere else.