06 December 2016

Our family roadtrip - part 1

Hello! 

After spending a month away we have finally returned home! At the end of our journey we had driven 6553kms in and around 3 states (NSW, VIC & SA). Not only had it been the longest trip in the car, but also the longest break we have had together as a family.



We have seen some pretty spectacular parts of Australia, and made plenty of lovely memories which I'm sure we will treasure for a long time.

During the time my husband and I have been together, we have travelled to some beautiful places both in Australia and overseas so to experience a trip like this with our two girls, in our own country, has been amazing.

If you had been following me on my Instagram account you would have seen some pics of random places we had visited.

There's so much to see in our country, and so many wonderful places to visit. I thought I would share some of our adventure with you, including some of our favourite places to stay and visit.

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Narrandera, NSW (pron. nar-ran-dra, not nerrin-derr-a like Popette kept saying) was our first overnight stop. It's a beautiful country town with colonial style buildings, and home to Australia's largest playable guitar. It was also home to a flying training school run by the RAAF in WWII, which provided introductory flight instruction to new pilots.


A Tiger Moth commemorating the No. 8 Flying school from WWII.

Here we had our very first night camping in our new tent. I know you are wondering if it took us 3 minutes to get the tent up...well after a couple weeks of getting used to it, we were getting close to it!

It was the girls first proper night of camping, so they were very excited to be in their sleeping bags and have their own room in the tent. It took a long time for them to calm down and stop talking!

While Hubby and I sat back and looked up at the millions of stars that night, Popette came out for extra cuddles and saw her first falling star!

Our campsite at Narrandera


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Driving towards Hay the area became noticeably more arid and flat...I mean really flat, the vista went on for miles, and miles. Around Hay we saw damage from the recent floods, plus a lot of farmers harvesting their fields. There was huge round bales of hay everywhere we looked.



Amazingly there wasn't much roadkill on this section of the Sturt, however we did see an abundance of birds, mainly kites, wedge-tail eagles, cockatoos, galahs and ravens. We also saw a mob of Emus, which was exciting seeing them in the wild.

Emus out Hubby's window

After a mandatory ice cream stop at Balranald, we got back on the Sturt Highway and was about 5kms out of town when Hubby almost ran over a goanna. He was at least 1.5 meters long, Cherub's account - it took up half the road!

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Mildura, Victoria



We decided to spend a few nights in Mildura and let the girls have a rest from being in the car.

We had read about the paddle steamers, so we were excited to go down to the pier and see if we could spot one, the girls loved riding their scooters along the boardwalk.

We also visited Orange World where we learnt a lot from Mario our guide. It was sad to hear that he only makes 20 cents per kilo for his juicy oranges, so he's now planting more mandarins as he gets $1 a kilo.

Hubby and I enjoyed cruising along the Murray River, and visiting an old goal (over the NSW border) at Wentworth. So much to see in this gorgeous town.

P.S Melbourne - one of the oldest steam driven paddle steamers still operating in Australia.
L to R: Old Wentworth Goal, Tractor tour of Orange world, Big Lizzie and brekky at our camp site.
Aboard the cruise

The lovely sights and surrounds of Mildura

After an enjoyable, but chilly, stay in Mildura it was time for us to hit the road and get to Adelaide!

See next week's post for part 2 of our road trip.

2 comments:

  1. Wow you did well. The Hay Plains..yep, I have only driven over part of it back in the 1970s and it is relentless. We taught in an area close to where you went through. My husband was in a school called Merriwagga where there is one of NSW Black Stump locations and I taught at Hillston. Glad you shared here, it is good to see part of Australia through the camera! Denyse #teamIBOT

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    1. Hi Denyse, Thanks, yes we covered a lot. It was interesting seeing other parts of the country, and how people live on the land and their farms. :)

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