After spending Christmas with Zoȅ, Shaun and the boys, we began to wend our way slowly home. We never travel along the coast at holiday times but stick to country towns which we far prefer. This time we had decided to head for Henty, which is a charming little town where we had stayed on several occasions. The road to Henty took us through Culcairn, another nice place we were quite familiar with but this time Ian spotted a new sign for a caravan park. We decided to take a quick look and found it to be a delightful, new, council owned park on the riverbanks. The amenities were brand new and there was a well equipped camp kitchen, all for $30 a night. There was a little bit of truck noise, but not enough to worry us, and the occasional train - we were excited to see the incredibly long steeler train, fully laden, on its way to Melbourne. The old pub was in a beautiful building with a gorgeous garden and dinner was very reasonable and huge.
Wantabadgery was our next planned destination but Wikicamps told us it was very busy so we carried on to Bethungra Dam just outside Cootamundra. It was fab, I don't know how we haven't found it before! It was free camping around a huge dam with a big area of BBQs and plenty of picnic tables and clean drop toilets. Bit tricky to find a level site but we managed, although it did get much busier as the weekend approached. Lots of families fishing and kayaking. Halfway along the road on the way in was the Bethungra Rail Spiral, just staggering to imagine how the railway line was cut through the rock.
The next day was wet but the forecast all around was for far worse weather so we stayed put and went into Cootamundra to get some supplies in Woolies. A family camped near us had turned up with a sizeable catamaran but clearly did not want to launch it in the wet. It carried on raining for another day but dawned bright and sunny on the Saturday so we saw them take to the water before we left.
We were travelling in manageable chunks because we did not want to spend the whole time driving, so hit the Olympic Highway again and stopped for a coffee in Young the cherry capital. Christmas is the height of the cherry season and we were amused to see signs everywhere warning us to beware of cherry related vehicles on the move. Even in a reasonably big town like Young everything still closed at 1pm on a Saturday so I failed to get into a camping shop for a couple of things I was hoping to pick up there.
For the third time on the trip, we set off with a destination in mind but spotted an alternative along the way. This time we fancied Lyndhurst as a stop but spied a sign for an RV stopover as we drove through Koorawatha so pulled over to take a look. It was a splendid, peaceful showground, $15 with power, new toilets and hot showers, pay at the pub. It was a bit windy but very relaxing, a group of eight vans were camped together near the amenities for their annual New Year's Eve get together and then just us. Dinner at the pub was excellent and inexpensive and the landlady told us about the New Year celebrations planned for the next evening. Turned out the big group staying near us were detectorists so they all wandered off in different directions beeping the next morning while we followed a sign to Koorawatha Falls.
Very bumpy 4WD road in then quite a walk with plenty of scrambling over rocks but well worth it. The falls were beautiful. Quite a number of groups were clambering in with eskies full of beer to spend New Year's Eve there so I imagine it probably got a bit messy later. NYE at the pub was wonderful. Beach volleyball, slippy slide, dinosaur racing and a BBQ to raise money for the showground. We would definitely visit Koorawatha again.
On New Year's Day we set of for Lake Wallace in Wallerwang. There was a terrible accident there a couple of days previously with two killed and 15 injured but people were still driving like idiots on the approach to the turn off and we were glad to get off that particular stretch of road. Lake Wallace had room for hundreds of vans and tents, free camping with basic amenities. It was far too busy for our taste but the lake was beautiful and it would probably be more pleasant out of season.
