We were still Rambling The Outback. After a very comfortable night’s sleep in the big king-sized beds at Mungo Lodge, I was up around 5.30 and out the door just after six. Along with Lisa and Amy, we jumped in with Roy and Julie and headed off to the Mungo Lookout for a sunrise. The location was average. It was recommended to us by John at reception as a good sunrise spot. It was for viewing the sunrise. But for, shooting a sunrise it left a lot to be desired. There is no foreground interest and miles and miles of endless flat plain to the sun on the horizon. In the future, when someone recommends a spot to me, I will ask, “are you a photographer”  if the answer I no, I will disregard them!

Once the sun was up, we drove down to the Historic Shearing Shed just a few minutes down the road.

The woolshed

Paddy Melons

After about an hour, we headed back to mungo lodge for showers, breakfast and checkout. Breakfast was a delicious cooked buffet in the restaurant. Leaving Mungo, we came across Paddy Melons growing beside the road. 

Paddy melon (Cucumis myriocarpus) and Afghan melon (Citrullus lanatus) is both prostrate annual melons germinating in spring and summer. Their growth is favoured by good moisture relations and bare or fallowed paddocks. Melons can stabilise areas prone to wind erosion and provide stock feed when food is scarce (although opinions vary greatly). Horse, sheep and cattle losses have been associated with eating the melon, but the smell of the plants generally makes them unpalatable. Dept of Agriculture

Dirt Roads

From Mungo, we were heading first to Balranald and then onto Swan Hill. Between Balranald and us lay 154kms of dirt road. According to google maps, it’s a 5-hour drive. Maybe they assume you are driving a horse and cart as we did it in just over 2 hours.   Just out of Balranald, we finally got the bitumen back.

Swan Hill

We stopped off in Balranald for coffee and comfort stop and were then on our again. Finally, driving on lovely bitumen, we arrived in Swan Hill around midday. I popped into the motel and made sure all was ready for the arrival of those travelling behind us. Then headed over to the Pioneer Settlement and organised the tickets for the evening light show, settlement entry, and Pyap Paddlesteamer ride. We wandered around the settlement for a while, bumped into a few of the group who had arrived, took a paddle steamer ride and then headed back to the hotel to relax for an hour before dinner.

Dinner was at Spoons Restaurant beside the settlement. Sitting outside on the deck, the sky started to turn a glorious orange-red. Everyone started looking and then dashed off for a couple of shots with phones—fantastic sunset, and most of us there without cameras.

After a delicious dinner, we headed over to the settlement for the Heartbeat of the Murray Laser Show. Excellent show using water, laser, and sound, it recently won a prestigious multimedia award. With the closing of the show, we went back to our motel for the night; it was the end of a fabulous week We Got to know some people better and met others for the first time by the close of the week; we had all become closer, had a million memories, and about as many photographs 🙂  The following day it was packed up and headed home and back to ‘real life’. Thank you to all who took this journey with me.