Wanting to celebrate the 18th birthday of our Grandson, we decided not to attend the Australian Caravan Club’s National Muster in Mildura VIC, however, the opportunity presented itself to participate in a branch tagalong heading to the National Muster and leave the tagalong in time to return home for the birthday. This tagalong would be different for us with the focus being on free camping. That meant we needed to carry a grey water collector as we do not have a grey tank and sufficient battery power to charge phone etc and computers and iPad if required. We also need to make sure we had enough gas to run our refrigerator when the power was not being provided by the car.
Hoping that all the above was covered, we departed our home at 9:15am for the relatively short trip to Gunning where we would join other members of the tagalong.
Other than being held up near Wilton with road works, we arrived at Sutton Forest and the Heatherbrae bakery just after 11:15am where we stopped for an early lunch. Continuing towards our destination, we detoured via Goulburn where we managed to obtain fuel and what we though was a reasonable price. The service stations near the highway wanted 1.82cpl where a short drive away from the highway saw us buying fuel at 1.73cpl.
We were expecting rain but that held off until well after we arrived at the Gunning Showground just after 1:15pm. We were the second to arrive and we spent the next hour in their caravan waiting for others to arrive. The rain started mid-afternoon but was light but soaking.
Another couple arrived at 3:15pm and directed us to the location that had been chosen for our stay. We relocated to the other site and not long after, all but one of the other participants arrived. One member had extended their awning, so friendships were renewed under the awning and out of the rain.
We decided to walk to the Telegraph Hotel later in the afternoon for a meal. It was still raining and it took about 5 minutes to walk from the showground to the hotel. A booking had previously been made for a private room. The final member of those expected at Gunning arrived just after 6:00pm and we all enjoyed great meals from the hotel before returning back to the camp site.
It continued to rain until we went to bed but with the temperature reducing slowly, we were hopeful of a comfortable night in bed.