Lake Eildon

Although we had been living in the van in Mornington since mid Jan, we kept popping back to our Mum’s places to drop off gear we didn’t need, so we didn’t feel like we had officially left yet.

On Feb 1^st, we finally departed for our first stop – Lake Eildon.  We stayed in a lovely caravan park next to the Eildon Pondage (a waterway that you can fish in but not swim in) and were surrounded by trees, birds and very few other campers.  This bird found our clothesline to be a very comfy perch.

Ben discovered a love of tennis and mini golf so both became daily activities.  Despite being surrounded by lakes, he also insisted we go to the Eildon Pool, which he enjoyed immensely until the end of our second visit when he was playing catch with Jenny and ran backwards into a large metal pole.  Ouch!  He ended up with a big egg on the back of his head that has taken several days to subside.

Off season is great for seeing the touristy things.  We went to Eildon Dam and there was nobody else there.  The roads were quiet, the shops were deserted and the caravan park was tranquil (until 2 carloads of yobs with slabs of beer and loud music turned up on Friday night – but the previous 4 nights were tranquil).

Ben’s last playdate with his kinder friends saw them all use the local cricket pitch’s plastic rain covers as a slip ‘n slide after a cold rainy day.  Ben got absolutely saturated so his friend Blake lent him some clothes.  We won’t be seeing Blake again for many months so we are taking Blake’s undies for a holiday.  This is Ben at Eildon Dam with Blake’s Adventurous Undies. 

 

We were still sorting things into their rightful places in the van and car, and over the first few days we realised that we just had too much stuff.  As sad as it made us, if we didn’t want to go mad from clutter, we would have to offload the non-essential big things. We had some bulky items that took up too much space, and unnecessary weight means using more fuel than we need to so we had another big cull.  Tools we didn’t need any longer, big super comfy deck chairs, heavy solar panels and 65kg of annex all went in the ‘back to Mum’s’ pile.  Then Mum had a great suggestion (partly from trying to save us a trip and probably partly from panic that we were going to fill her shed with even more stuff).  We were about to head to Rutherglen to visit friends and Mum knew that they have a big garage – she suggested we ask if they might store some things for us.  We asked, and they very kindly said yes!

We left lovely Eildon for Rutherglen, having had a great first stop.