Things you find at the river

Part of my “Things you find at the…” series, here is a post to prove to you that I didn’t spend all summer just at the beach!

On one gorgeous afternoon, all the planets aligned and DS, his mum and dad, and I all had an afternoon off work, free of housework and any other commitments. We decided at lunchtime to go for a drive to the Riverland…ok, I feel I should be honest here, we didn’t all just “decide”…there was a fair bit of discussion and, on my part, angst at such an “outrageous” last minute suggestion from DS to upset my plans of lying on the couch all afternoon!

This was one afternoon I had no plans on soaking up the outdoors, just intentions to sit indoors and read my book!

We did, however, all end up going for a two-hour drive to a private spot on the banks of the River Murray, near Blanchetown. And, I must admit, the drive and being outdoors was far more satisfactory then sitting indoors with my book!

The River Murray is Australia’s longest river, twisting it’s way through 3 states, New South Wales at the beginning, along the border of NSW and Victoria, and winding it’s way through South Australia to the southern coast. An interesting fact that I just found out on wikipedia is that every state in Australia calls it the Murray River, except for South Australia! Why we call it something different is beyond me! But, as I’m a South Aussie, you will be seeing it referred to as the River Murray here in my post

I grew up on the coast so have never spent a great deal of time at the River Murray. I can’t stand the thought of swimming somewhere I can’t see the bottom, but it is quite popular for swimming, boating, water-skiing and fishing. We just took the old “camp on the banks of the river” option

Here are some things that can be found at the River.

Blue skies, the river, shady trees and some that haven’t faired as well.

A tree that had been struck by lightning.

Gumtrees (officially named Eucalyptus trees), providing shade on the track.

We (DS) tried our hand at “yabbying,” the activity of attempting to catch yabbies, with these here yabby nets. Yabbies are freshwater crustaceans, and look similar to big prawns/little crayfish. They are quite tasty, but on this trip we were only succussful in catching a handful of tiny yabbies which had to be thrown back.

It was quite lucky we weren’t relying on those yabbies for dinner and had brought along our gas BBQ (due to fireban season in summer, no wood fires are permitted) and crockpot to cook a roast lamb. Yum!

While we were waiting for the lamb to cook, I wandered around and soaked up the great outdoors. These pair are cockatiels, natural to Australia and part of the cockatoo family.

And, this, my friends, is a kookaburra. I had never seen one in the wild before so you can imagine my excitement at spotting this one…again…and again…and again! It was an extremely well-photographed bird that day! The kookaburras, in case you were not aware, are the birds that make a sound like laughter.

It was an amazing afternoon, so relaxing and so beautiful. Good work DS for getting us out to experience all that the Mighty Murray has to offer.

Ahhhh….the serenity