Day 2 Sunday 18th June

We had a fairly cool night so a few extra blankets were required but all was good. We woke to the eerie view of a heavy fog over the river. This fog lasted for most of the morning and only lifted around lunchtime. After breakfast we decided to go for a long walk to Lock 9 following the Murray around a huge bend to reach the Lock. We thoroughly enjoyed this walk with the peaceful river, huge gum trees and inquisitive wildlife all in the fog. It reminded me a little of the movie “Picnic at Hanging Rock”. I was waiting for one of the schoolgirls to come walking towards us out of the fog. After returning to the van we had some morning tea and then packed up and headed to Mildura. We arrived in Mildura around lunchtime and booked into a beautiful Caravan Park, right on the river and on the NSW side. This park is huge and has many magnificent gums all through the park. It also has manicured lawns and gardens, sculptures, wildlife and fairy lights decorating some of the garden areas. We booked in here for 2 nights and after a quick bite for lunch headed to the Australian Inland Botanic Gardens. We were most impressed as this was free and contained over 50 hectares of gardens with plants from around the world. I headed for the huge rose garden which despite being so late in the season, had many roses still in flower. We did a drive around the rest of the gardens. From here we visited a huge Gem shop that had an amazing display of gemstones, jewellery and giftware. There was a workshop with demonstrations of the cutting, grinding and polishing of gemstones. I was very tempted by the jewellery but resisted. We drove to the Mildura Information Centre and checked out the displays there as well as getting some more info about some of places we were heading to.





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