Hello Rutherglen!

The drive to Rutherglen was pretty uneventful.  We have realised that now we are towing a whale behind us, we need to be extra mindful of the routes we take.  Our GPS and Google Maps all tend to select the quickest routes without consideration of the vehicle making the journey and whilst the roads we drove were all bitumen and in excellent condition, some were very windy, single lane and narrow.  This made manoeuvring around corners a little tricky as we couldn’t see oncoming traffic and it also meant that we pissed off a lot of people who got stuck behind us doing 45kmph up steep bits with no chance of overtaking. We were good citizens and pulled over wherever we could though, which resulted in some nice waves of appreciation.  It was a relief to eventually hit the Hume Hwy.

From now on we will examine the suggested route more carefully and take the bigger roads if there’s an option to do so.

We have long time family friends in Rutherglen and it was great to see them all again.  We hadn’t been up here for a few years (Ben was crawling when they last saw them) and they greeted us warmly even after we’d dumped 150kg of gear in their garage.   Huge thanks to Phil and Frances for this generosity.   We all went around to Gill and Ken’s house for a great BBQ and Ben christened their pool with its first skinny dip, before running around so much that he even exhausted their 2 year old dog.  He is certainly taking to this nomadic, outdoor lifestyle with relish (notwithstanding his current Sonic the Hedgehog obsession).

This week we made a break-through by finally getting out of Victoria (even though it was only for a couple of hours into NSW and then we came back). Nonetheless we finally feel like we have broken the shackles of home. Corowa in NSW is home to the Corowa Whisky and Chocolate Factory where we met up with Frances, Kathryn, Gill, Sara and Emily for coffee (and chocolate of course). Ben made a giant freckle which tastes absolutely delicious and it took a lot of restraint for me to not eat it all on the spot.

In the afternoon we all met up again at Moodemere Lake (minus Sarah, plus Phil) for a swim in the warm waters. The bottom of the lake was super squelchy black mud which felt smooth and moisturising once you got over the initial texture shock. It reminded me of $100 tubs of beauty products I’ve wasted money on before, so I smeared it all over my face and neck. I asked Ben if he thought it would make me look pretty and he said “No, it makes you look old”. I’m convinced that people would pay loads of money to have this mud spread over them at a day spa and as I write this blog entry I’m sure my skin is glowing.

We stayed in the warm water for over an hour. About 60 seconds after we got out, Louise and Ben spotted a slithering shape in the water where we had been playing. It was a red bellied black snake (quite a small one though at only 1 meter long) and it slithered up to the shore to have a good look at us. It hung around the shore for a few minutes and checked us out from different angles before swimming into the reeds 5 meters away (perhaps where its mummy was resting?). As we’ve since found out, we were lucky that it was a red-bellied black snake as they are quite timid; it could easily have been a far more aggressive brown snake.  Also, our friends spent many, many years living on a cattle station in Darwin and to them it was a case of “oh, that little thing?  Don’t worry, it’s just a juvenile. It will go away.  Lucky it’s not a brown.”  Their calm helped us suppress our city slicker freak out.

Feeling a little shaken but excited from the snake experience, we decided it was time to leave and enjoy fish and chips from the Silver Key café on Main Street Rutherglen and watch the big rigs go by on their trucking routes.