We were in no hurry to leave today as our intended destination was Canberra in the ACT. We had spoken with friends who live in Canberra the previous evening and decided to head in that direction.
First stop would be friends who live near Wagga (this part of the trip would only take an hour) and then we would have a further couple of hours to get to Canberra.
We spent an hour or so with our friends near Wagga (last time we were in this area the ground was exceptionally dry and brown, today it was green and lush and the dams were fully of water – this was a result of the rain belt that we experienced at Bathurst). After leaving our friends property, we stopped at a bakehouse at Uranquinty for lunch and then headed through Wagga. We had initially planned to stay at Wagga but decided to head to Canberra. As an afterthought, we decided to phone ahead and check availability at a caravan park we intended to stay at. They were fully booked. We tried every caravan park in the ACT and the adjacent NSW town of Queanbeyan all with the same answer, “fully booked”. We were told that the reason for the lack of accommodation related to Parliament sitting at the time, the up-coming Canberra Show and another festival being held over the coming weekend at Corin. We were able to secure a booking for Thursday and Friday nights but not at a location that we really wanted to stay at.
We considered returning to Wagga but decided to head either to Gundagai (we could free camp behind “The Dog on the Tuckerbox” or Yass where we would have to find something. We considered a couple of free camp sites in the ACT but decided against that due to the fact we would arrive late and “others” in the same situation would have occupied the sites.
Then we decided to head to Tumut and a caravan park we had stayed at before and if that was not available, one of two free camp sites we were aware of adjacent to the Snowy Mountain highway.
We were able to book into the “Riverglade Caravan Park” where we had stayed in March 2008 during our trip titled “The Great Alpine Drive”. We were allocated a spot on the banks of the Tumut River and this was possibly one of the most tranquil camping sites we have ever had.
We managed to do some washing before spending “happy hour” sitting and watching the river flow by.
[singlepic=141,320,240,,]The Tumut River adjacent to our camp.
We had another comfortable night.