Thursday March 6, 2014

A late start today due to the fact that the camp-site does not have kitchen facilities and the café doesn’t open until 8:00 am.  We had a lovely breakfast of bacon and egg on an English muffin and coffee.  We were on the road by 9:00 am.

It was an interesting route today, the first 9 kms was very straight and was along the lake shore, into a wind.

The second 9 kms was along miles upon miles of vineyards.  Wolf Blass, vineyards to name one that I recognized.

The next 31 kms was straight, flat, into a wind and would have been very boring if it hadn’t been for the fact that we are cycling in Australia.

I was trying to think of words to describe today\’s scenery as I was cycling.  There was a mixture of farmland, beef and sheep and some crops, that have already been harvested leaving scrubby fields. The fields look incredibly dry and barren, as if nothing could really grow here.  To one side of us was the lake and river, and there should have been some small lakes which were completely dry.  Of course we are now going into Australia’s autumn/fall so they should be getting some rain.

Wellington where we are staying tonight consists of a gas (petrol) station/general store, a hotel, a café (closed today), a campsite and a ferry.  We are here for the ferry crossing.  Our campsite tonight is very rustic but does have a camp kitchen.  The tent sites were $21.00 but we offered us a cabin for $30.00 (because we were touring cyclists) – we took the cabin.

We spoke to the fella who ran the general store/gas station.  The Town of 150 people does not have piped water and relies solely on rain water and river water.  The campsite has rainwater tanks for potable water, everything else uses river water (untreated).  We have bought a 10 litre box of water for our needs tonight and tomorrow, just to be on the safe side.