Lake Boga

We sadly left the land of fab pizza and new friends to continue our journey westwards.  We headed towards Swan Hill and I thought that since we had been to Swan Hill a few times before, it would be nice to stay a little out of town.

I booked us in at the Lake Boga Caravan Park, which is about 15km from Swan Hill.  The caravan park is lovely and we set up literally on the shores of the lake under a beautiful old gum tree.  As lovely as it is though, it isn't that great for kids, hence the total lack of any other kids.  I got a big frown from Ben when he discovered there was no playground, but if tranquility, peace and quiet is your want, this is the place for you. Except at night that is, when the passing trucks on the highway next door sound especially loud.

We stayed there for three nights because I accidentally booked for 3 nights instead of 2 and they have a no refunds policy (which triggered Jenny's intense hatred of pointless, inflexible policies and earned them a fairly scathing Trip Advisor review.)

We were planning to be free camping on these three days but it was HOT (high 30's).  Free camping is setting up in a park or by a river etc where you are self sufficient and not plugged into power or water supplies (hence the free - no cost).  Free camping means we can only run the aircon with our generator, and then not really at full capacity. We thought it would be best to spend these sweltering days plugged in to a 240V outlet so we would not swelter.

Lake Boga is really big and used to be the home of a secret flying boat repair depot during WW2, the flying boats were called "Catalinas". Jenny lived in Swan Hill in her early primary school years and used to swim in Lake Boga. We toured the Flying Boat Museum ("Home of the Catalina") which was really interesting.  Rural Victoria is certainly a good place to hide your amphibious planes.

Ben with a Catalina and Blake's undies

The highlight of these three days was the discovery of an exceptional water slide at the Swan Hill Pool.  We went there 2 days in a row and got lots of good leg exercise climbing up the stairs over and over to get to the top.  Ben absolutely loved it and declared both days "the best day ever!"

Ben's head, Jenny's feet

Lake Boga also has an observatory and we did a day visit there.  We would have loved to do a night tour which would have included viewing the night sky but due to daylight savings it didn't start until 9pm which is a little late for Ben, even though he is on a holiday bedtime schedule.  The daytime visit was still very interesting (to Jenny and me anyway.  Ben declared it boring 5 minutes after the presenter began his talk).

We also would have liked to visit the new revamped "Sound and Light" nighttime show at the Swan Hill Pioneer Settlement. The old show hadn't changed in 40 years and is described by Jenny as "Piss Weak World at night"; the new show however is apparently fantastic and well worth seeing, however it doesn't start until 8:30pm and finishes at 10:30pm which are very unfriendly times for a 5 year old.

I had a grand plan for Ben and I to learn to fish together on this trip and have brought along the fishing rod and tackle box that I last used when I was 12 or so.  Dad took me fishing occasionally and I really liked the fishing part, leaving the hook removal and gory activities that followed to Dad.  I'm ready to do all that now though so I bought some worms and a 48 hour fishing license and headed to the shores of Lake Boga with Ben.

My first discovery is that worms are really wriggly and it's gross sticking them on a hook.  Next time I am going to use mozzarella (recommended by several people here) or some other already dead type meat.

My second discovery was that Ben has the attention span of a pea and after 3 minutes declared the whole exercise really boring, running back to the caravan to play with Jenny.  Oh well.  My planned Mum/Ben bonding activity will become a Mum quiet time, hopefully catch some dinner activity.

Despite assurances from the caravan park manager that there were lots of fish in the lake, I didn't even get a nibble.  I didn't mind though, it was very relaxing standing there as the sun slowly set, watching the pelicans groom themselves a short distance up the beach.  I'll keep trying as we go along.

Good news at last on the car.  We have found someone in Adelaide who can do a bullbar for us!  We will get that done and then head off across the Nullarbor around 21st Feb.

We left Lake Boga on Feb 15th, heading to our first free camp about half way to Adelaide.