We had a choice. Today is the 20th of July, we’re currently in Canberra and need to be in Darwin on the 15th of August. There are two major routes we could take, each with pros and cons;
- Head north, up through NSW, taking in the Opal Fest in Lightning Ridge en route, then into Southwest Qld to Boulia, before turning east and taking the Plenty Hwy (dirt road) into NT, popping out just north of Alice Springs. Then it’s a short jaunt north up the Stuart Hwy to Darwin.
- Or, do we do a Pet Shop Boys and ‘Go West’, following(ish) the Murray River back into SA, taking in the Flinders Ranges and hopefully the Oodnadatta Track en route before driving north to Darwin from the bottom of the Stuart Hwy.
We went West as did the Pet Shop Boys.

1st stop Grong Grong! Honestly, who names these towns?
Leaving Canberra after a very shitty day weather-wise, we first headed out to Bethungra to refuel with diesel costing $1.839/l versus >$2/l around our nation’s capital. We then passed through Junee to quickly stop and grab a show bag’s worth of yummy chocolate (for treating ourselves when peckish).
We had initially intended to camp in Junee, but when looking at GoogleMaps we saw Grong Grong was just up the road and on our planned path for tomorrow, so we headed there for the night. Who can pass up a stop at a town called Grong Grong? As expected, there’s not a lot going on in Grong Grong, a population of 150, a pub and a general store are about your lot. However, the community has made an effort to install a toilet and shower block and allow free camping alongside, which is what we availed ourselves of.
The sign behind our car explained the origins of the town name Grong Grong, which, apparently, is Aboriginal for “bad camping ground”. We got on ok, although it did feel a bit weird to set up, and then sleep in the van, whilst camped on the side of the road, near the only shop in town (which was closed as it was Sunday). We were packed up and off early on the Monday morning, though, prior to the Grong Grong peak hour rush.


For our next stop, we had intended to head through to Hay for an overnighter, and then onto Mildura for a couple of nights, before making our way to Morgan in SA, and then onto the Flinders Ranges. However, whilst doing more GoogleMapping, we realised we weren’t that far from Bendigo and it was a place on Jules’ must-visit list one day. So with that in mind, we opted for the more circuitous route, via Bendigo, adding about 400km to our leg for this blog post. Speaking of km, we’ve now clocked over 10,000km for this trip and Sir Gwavin’s trip odometer has rolled over and back to 0. I’m not sure how many km’s we’ll end up doing yet.
Apart from a quick toilet stop in a small town, I can’t remember the name of, our first stop heading to Bendigo was at Deniliquin for a nice coffee, shared a homemade sausage and cheese toasty. We then stopped again in Rochester to enjoy the cool silo and street art, before arriving in Bendigo, staying at the “Golden Nugget Tourist Park”, in time to do our fortnight’s worth of laundry.






Jules and I both agree that Bendigo is lovely. Pretty much as I remembered from my few visits as a kid.
We started the day trying to find all-day parking eventually learning that you can park in a 3hr spot and top the meter up as you need. Then it was off to find brekky and we’d read Chancery Lane is the shiz. The laneway is pretty cool, with plenty of funky graffiti art and random things in the laneway. We ended up brekky’ing at El Gordo, a Spanish-inspired cafe and had the “Huevos Rancheros”, which are Spanish-style beans with chorizo, capsicum, sofrito a couple of baked eggs on top and tortilla. Yummo.



From there we wandered a bit, taking in the Chinese Gardens, the Conservatory and Visitors Centre. Then it was onto the restored tram for the 45-minute city loop which was great.








Still full from our brekky, we opted to skip lunch and walked up and down View St, Bendigo’s Art Centre. Our first stop was a combo antique store & art studio. Some of the antiques were truly beautiful and appropriately priced and it was worth taking the time to wander around the wares and wonderful old building, which just seemed to get bigger and bigger the further we explored it. Further up View St we toured the Bendigo Art Gallery and were impressed by the quantity and quality of some of the works. Following this we did some more walking around the city, before driving out, about 15kms south to visit and taste the local and regional wines at St Anne’s Winery. A nice little winery with good wines and a great cheese platter. All in all a good day in and around Bendigo, before grabbing some shopping to restock food supplies ready for heading more remote over the next couple of weeks.




Another route choice today, Wednesday 24/7. We’re heading for Morgan in SA, but have a couple of route options, the main and GoogleMaps preferred route is north via Mildura, so we opted for the 3rd option, via the Mallee Hwy and what we thought would be the quieter road. This route also had the great circumstance of taking us through the old town localities of Teddywaddy and Boinka – no shit, someone at some time actually thought these would be good names for a town. Another aspect of this route was it was following another silo-art trail so we stopped for the odd look-see and photo in some of the towns.
Tonight we’re camped up at Murrayville, just within the Victorian side of the Vic/SA border, and tomorrow we’re heading up to Morgan for a couple of nights.









On the road again. Yep, we’re moving further north to Cadell, in the South Australia Riverina region, alongside our great Murray River. With rain overnight and heavy skies this morning, the clouds over the farmland were epic, with two very clear cloud levels and types. I kept looking for a spot to pull over for a photo, but had trouble finding the right foreground and/or finding a safe spot to stop. In the end grabbing a couple of shots that weren’t great, but tried to capture what my eye was seeing and appreciating.


We were also surprised to see how quickly the landscape changed from flat-ish farmland to orchards, vineyards snaking along the, at times, deep and wide valley carrying the Murray River.







Today, our last day in Cadell, we drove out around the north side of the Murray River, taking two ferries across it, the first in Cadell and the second in Waikerie. We then parked up in Waikerie and walked around the clifftop trail, taking in the Silo Art and various foodie outlets.














Following a coffee and pie from the Waikerie butcher, we looped towards home via Blanchetown. We were blown away by how quickly the landscape changed from vineyards and orchards to sand dune-based low scrubland. We didn’t get Blanchetown either, it sits on a steep side of the Murray River with all the lower houses built on stilts, but seemingly well within a high flood level, which Jules proved true with some quick googling. The town itself felt a bit like an industrial mining town, think Iron Knob or Port Augusta as everyone was wearing hi-vis, but I’m not sure what the main type of work is around here.
The best thing we saw in Blanchetown, however, was the Number #1 Lock across the Murray River, there are 11 of them, apparently. The locks were installed to regulate water flow and improve shipping access and water storage for consumption. The shags and pelicans know when and where they’re onto a good thing though, there were hundreds of birds on and behind the lock, supposedly waiting for the odd lost fish. Speaking of fish, the locks have three sections to them, the weir, a shipping lane (front section of next picture) where boats can be lowered or raised to the next level and a fish gate which is designed to allow the fish to safely traverse them and no more than 1m rise or fall per 30m length of river.




On our way back to camp from Blanchetown, we took a backroad, as is our thing. And whilst trundling along the gravel we came across what we thought was a dead emu in the middle of the road, only to be horrified to see that it was still alive as we drove past. Although I absolutely hated doing it, we stopped and I euthanised it, then dragged it off the road. Poor bugger, I don’t think he’d been there for long, but there must have been at least three other cars that passed it without stopping as they had passed us only a minute or so beforehand.
I was shaking afterwards, and it’s still playing on my mind a bit, but I know the emu was a goner, he just hadn’t died yet. Without going into all the gory details, he couldn’t move and was in obvious pain when I approached him. I hope my small act of mercy relieved him of his suffering much quicker than waiting to die through his injuries, or by being hit by another car.
Tomorrow we’re off to the Flinders Ranges for a few days, the subject of our next blog post.