First Day & Jugiong

Saturday the 3rd of April finally arrived and so it was time to begin our Corryong Man From Snowy River Bush Festival (MFSRBF) and Murray River trip. We had to have a late start due to a commitment for that morning. However, the late start got later due to a medical issue that arose for our daughter Bec. She had some chest pain which sounds bad but in the end it seems that she may have strained a muscle when she was lifting a heavy bag. Being Easter Saturday the only doctors around were at the hospital so Linda took her there. Fortunately it was not busy. Wow when does that happen in a hospital! In the end we didn’t leave till 2.20pm. Bec was fine so all good.
The photo above is our rig. For those not familiar with it we have a 23 foot van (internal) built by Vanguard. It is towed by a 2014 200 series Land Cruiser (LC). We have had the van since early 2012 and the LC we bought in 2014. The van has two eighty watt solar panels, a diesel heater, a dc to dc charger to help the two deep cycle batteries run the fridge while travelling. There are many other standard features that go with a modern van that size. It has a great ground clearance and sturdy chassis. It is not an all terrain vehicle but what the manufacturers call a good dirt road van, which means it can go off road.
We had a beautiful day and no traffic and did the trip to Jugiong in four hours which is pretty good time if you are not factoring in lunch which we weren’t. We met up there with Jan & Ross who left much earlier in the day and were able to enjoy the beautiful afternoon chatting to neighbours. Apparently they experienced a lot of traffic on the Hume Hwy, sometimes very heavy, which we were able to avoid by our later start. The site is the free camp at the Jugiong Showgrounds and boy, was it full. We have stayed here three or four times but I have never seen it this full. The fact that it was Easter, and that there was a small horse meet here and others travelling to the MFSRBF meant that it was a full camp. Not sure how the two toilets (in the gents) will cope with those numbers.
We did not arrive till 6.30pm. Jan & Ross had saved a spot for us. We were nestled near some trees with tennis courts at the back of us. At least we were in time to enjoy a beer with Jan & Ross’s neighbours and that was cool.
We then retired to the van and had a relaxed night, soup dinner, some time on the blog and a bit of tele.

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