The journey home from Melbourne started with a detour to Sunbury to pick Monty up from the kennels. He was mysteriously fluffy and sweet smelling, I am hoping that a bath was just part of the service they offer and not necessitated by something dreadful Monty had done. 
We drove back across the Macedon Ranges to the Hume Highway and plumped for Oxley as a place to spend the night. Oxley is very near Glenrowan, the site of Ned Kelly's last stand, and sits on the banks of the King River. 

We have been choosing our free or very cheap overnight stopping places on line and this was an example of one that was not quite as advertised. The online post had told us we could free camp on the riverside at the Stan Allen Reserve (they always have names like this and are usually down the road from the Bert Pickles Bridge and the Fred Pratt Memorial Bowling Green). When we found the reserve we were greeted with a large No Overnight Camping sign which pointed out that we could camp at the Oxley Recreation Ground. This was a kilometre or so away from the town centre and not within walking distance of the pub which was not a problem for us because we had supplies with us, but would have been a bit of a nuisance if we were relying on the pub for our dinner. I am sure you are thinking, 'what was to stop you driving back?' and the answer is, you do not always want to leave your caravan unattended at a free camp.
The recreation ground turned out to be fine however, with several other caravans staying overnight too. It was a little irritating that the shiny, new toilet block was locked while the, clean but very grotty and old toilets were open for our use because there was a $10 honesty box charge for staying there and, while you grin and bear creepy toilets if you are not paying, I for one expect something in return for my ten bucks.
However, there was entertainment in the form of a little showjumping ring where a constant stream of riders turned up to practice so we had our own little gymkhana to watch.
We spent a pleasant night and found out the following morning that we could have reached a section of the riverbank within the recreation ground and camped there but we will know for next time.
Back on the road again we detoured through Rutherglen which is a beautiful little wine region and passed by Murdering Hut Creek and Police Paddocks Road (goodness knows what went on there!) We were looking to stop in Belangalo State Forest for the next night but could not find it on any maps even though it is pretty big. It was the site of several murders by serial killer Ivan Milat and it seems to have been renamed, a bit like 10, Rillington Place. As we didn't know what it had been renamed as, we stopped at Gunning as we had on the way down, instead. 

 Once home, we were cooking some sausages on our balcony when some very cheeky kookaburras turned up. We fed them a couple of bits of bacon, which was a mistake as now we can't leave anything unattended on the barbecue. If you look closely at the picture you will see they had brought two of their mates as back up!

 The next stop on our journey down to Melbourne was Jingellic. To get there we drove down to Gundegai where we joined the Snowy Mountains Highway, we love this route which takes us through Batlow and the apple growing country. The landscape is usually very green on this trip but, even this high up, it has been a very long, hot, dry summer so we drove past mile after mile of brown fields and paddocks broken up by huge lush green apple orchards covered in gauze. I thought this was to keep the bugs out but apparently it is to shade the fruit from the harsh sun. It is hard to believe that snow falls not far from here in winter. 
After passing through Tumbarumba we reached our destination for the next couple of nights. We have stayed in Jingellic before and, although it is a bit of a detour from our route, it is well worth it. The camping is free with the pub on one side of the camp area and the Murray River on the other. It was very busy in the evenings but emptied out during the day as caravanners moved on only to be replaced by a new set of Grey Nomads the following evening. The Grey Nomads are a huge community of retirees who have sold their homes and spend their lives on the road spending their childrens' inheritances and we see them everywhere. They seem to vanish during school holidays (many of them do house and pet sitting duties) then they reappear as soon as the kids go back to school. They are very proud of their Grey Nomad status and often have statements on the back of their vans like 'Bruce and Darleen. Adventure Before Dementia.'
 We spent two days in Jingellic and did pretty much nothing but read and paddle in the Murray, it was great. It was so beautiful I could have stayed for much longer but there was a purpose to our journey so we had to press on. The next job was to drop Monty at the kennels we had booked. This was in Sunbury and took us into Melbourne a different way, across the Macedon Ranges which were massive, undulating plains (brown again). Sunbury itself was a funny place, it is just a commutable distance from the city and there are endless new estates being built. All the new builds are huge McMansions as they are known in Australia, supposed to show wealth by sheer size alone, taste does not appear to come into it. 

Anyway, we arrived at Shaun and Zoe's and managed to park the caravan outside much to the horror of some of the neighbours, and the next day met up with Shaun's parents at the Avalon Air Show. 

 The air show was sensational, I had expected the flying displays to go on for about an hour then the rest of the time to be spent looking at planes but no, the flying went on for the entire duration of the show. It was staggeringly impressive, I can't begin to say what I enjoyed the most during the daytime it was that good. However, there was a real highlight when darkness fell.
We had seen a glider being towed up at dusk and forgotten about it when suddenly it lit up in the night sky. It was covered in LED lights and performed a beautiful balletic dance perfectly matched to music while shooting fireworks out of the ends of its wings until it reached the ground, unbelievable! You will have to take my word for it because I couldn't get a decent photo.
Next day was the engagement party which was a huge success. Congratulations Zoe and Shaun! 

 We hit the road again a couple of weeks ago on our way to Zoe and Shaun's engagement party in Melbourne. It is about 1100km to Melbourne from Port Stephens so we decided to make a bit of a road trip of it.
Our caravan is set up to enable us to free camp so we did a bit of research and picked out some likely spots to spend the night on the journey. These free camps are usually either country pubs which allow people to pitch up out the back and use the loos in return for the purchase of a couple of beers or a meal, or small towns that recognise allowing free camping will bring a bit of much needed business into the area. 

We had chosen Gunning as a potential stopover as it is right by the Hume Highway which is the freeway linking Sydney and Melbourne so off we set. The first part of the trip usually gets extremely tedious around Sydney where a connecting motorway tunnel seems to be taking an age to complete. At the moment traffic whizzes down the Pacific Highway then grinds nose to tail around residential streets to the north of the city before joining the freeway again. It must be awful for the people who live there as well as being dangerous, we often hear on the news that a lorry has lost control and ploughed into a front garden so the sooner the tunnel is finished the better for all concerned.

 It was not too bad today however and we made pretty good time, arriving at Gunning in the late afternoon. It is always a good idea to have a couple of alternative stopping places in mind when choosing a town for the first time as they are not always quite as advertised but Gunning was fine. The free camping spot was the recreation ground (home of the Gunning Roos rugby team - or football as they call it here) and there were about 6 other caravans already there. It was also home to a group of Crimson Rosellas, a new bird for me to tick off in my book. 

Gunning is a good example of a small town that has been left for dead by the construction of the new motorway. The old Hume Highway passed through the centre of the town bringing business to cafes, hotels, pubs and shops but now the road bypasses Gunning so the town council have been very forward thinking in encouraging visitors by offering a free place to stop. We had dinner in the pub, where they do a cheap special every night (tonight's was $10 schnitzel) and almost all the other caravanners were in there eating too, and it was the same with the coffee shop the next morning.

 Like many Australian country towns, Gunning has beautiful old buildings. The garage was my favourite closely followed by a tiny museum which had a notice on the door giving a phone number to call if we wanted to look around. Gunning also has something I am starting to learn to expect in every small town - a mysterious art shop that never opens but has strange artwork inside when you peer through the windows. This one had various pieces made of milk cartons and old broadsheet newspapers (?) 

 Back at the recreation ground we saw a sight which demonstrated how an Australian man will always find a use for a ute, this time for exercising his horses!