From the Snowy Mountains we headed South into Victoria, the third Australian state of our tour. Having camped the previous night in a picnic area with no running water, we stopped in the town of Mallacoota to have showers, stock up on water, food and beer, and then drove 15km into the bush to a tiny camping ground in the Croajingolong National Park. The last 7km of the drive was along an unsealed track and so we arrived amid a cloud of red dust to find that we were the only people there.
The next morning we set off on a 12km hike through wild bush still recovering from the devastating fires of East Gippsland last year.
Our walk was enjoyable until we came across a 5-foot red-bellied black snake. We stopped dead in our tracks and watched as it eyed us up before sliding towards us and then down a burrow. We recognised the snake having recently seen one in the zoo and so we knew it was poisonous. We walked on discussing "what would we have done if it had bitten one of us?" This was quite worrying as we were at least 2 hours from Mallacoota with no mobile phone coverage.
Our walk back to the camping ground was fortunately less stressful and we were delighted to discover a couple of empty beaches on the way. From our limited knowledge we were pretty certain that snakes don't like the beach!
That evening we were totally alone at the camping ground as we enjoyed our gourmet dinner of soup and toast cooked over the campfire.
It was pleasant until night set in and we sat listening to the noises of the woods around us. Knowing that any cracking of twigs was either a possum, goanna or person was a bit creepy. First Meg saw a big spider crawling up her chair, then we caught a possum sneaking up behind us looking for our food scraps ... and before we knew it we were tucked up in bed by 8pm!
The next day we headed West to Lakes Entrance and decided it was time to check into a commercial holiday park and enjoy the luxuries of running water and electricity.
However, a few kilometres short of its 200,000km birthday our old camper van packed up and refused to start. We managed to get a jump-start on the campsite and took it to a garage for a new battery for its birthday.
From there we headed on to Daylesford to stay in a woodland retreat and enjoy the local spa baths, before driving into Melbourne to stay with Meg's family.
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