Series 2 Episode 3: Meningie, Tailem Bend & the Murraylands

January 20, 2019

After all of the drama in last weeks episode, we were very happy to be back on the road, squeezing back out of that tight track, this time headed to the Murraylands in South Australia.

We really liked the idea that the Murraylands is where they mighty Murray exits out to the sea. It’s a river we’ve had many family holidays on in Victoria, and it’s amazing it reaches all the way here to South Australia.

We thought it might be an opportunity for a little bit of fishing too, to try to get the boys back into it. We had done a bit of fishing when the boys were younger, but if you have young kids you’ll know the fishing experience is generally you baiting up hooks, casting lines and untangling lines, with literally minimum chance for fishing yourself! But, turns out they have entered a golden age!

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We’re camped right up against Lake Albert here in Meningie. The boys are fishing with their reels, and already we have many tails of the ones that got away! We’ve got 3 cans of sweetcorn being used as bait in a rapid fashion, but all in the name of learning. 🐟 A little but windy, but nothing too bad. Pelicans everywhere! It’s a beautiful spot. #meningie #lifeisbetterbythelake #lakealbertcaravanpark #southaustralia #australia #seeaustralia

A post shared by Caravan Lap of Oz with Kids (@todoingfamily) on Jan 9, 2019 at 10:41pm PST

All of JD’s dreams had come true, not only had the kids become interested in fishing, but their attention spans were actually amazing. They fished basically for 2 days straight! Unfortunately with very little result. Just 3 or 4 stories about the ones that got away through Dad’s lack of experience. Harry had one landed but it hopped off and bounced back into the water! We had a fantastic campsite, right on the water so we were able to fish in front of the van.

It was an amazing location, and exactly what we were looking forward to on this lap of Australia. There were kayaks to hire, a great swimming area, plenty of people fishing and the boys enjoyed riding their bikes around the caravan park and down to the playground. They even had a giant chess set and a great camp kitchen. There’s a full review of the Lake Albert Caravan Park available on our website.

So the Murraylands take in a really large area here in the South East of South Australia. The big ticket items here, in addition to the mighty Murray and the Murray mouth are Lake Albert which we were camped on here in Meningie, Lake Alexandrina and the Coorong National Park. We also heard there was a small Aboriginal settlement on the way, a particular one which many of you will probably recognize.

It’s the home of David Unaipon, who you can see along with the local church on the Australian $50 note. He was a famous inventor who showed the Europeans that not only were Aboriginals equal to the Europeans, but they were extremely clever people who could come up with some stunning innovations. His best invention was the basis of common day shears used by all farmers today.

Whilst checking out the church and the Aboriginal community, we were approached by a travelling couple who were on their own lap of Australia. They had been on the road for three years, so it was great to have a chat and pick their brains a bit on the road ahead of us. They had received a tip off from one of the locals on a great lookout just at the back of the town. We hadn’t watched Wolf Creek, so agreed to tag along with total strangers. Eerily the track wound up past the local cemetery too!

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Lake Alexandrina is massive! We found this lookout off of a cliff in Raukkan, thanks to a tip off from some fellow travellers. The Murray River flows out into the lake prior to heading off to the ocean via the Murray Mouth. It’s 250 square miles, and predominantly freshwater year round. We tried pinging some rocks in with mixed results. 🤽‍♀️ #raukkan #meningie #backroads #southaustralia #seeaustralia #australia

A post shared by Caravan Lap of Oz with Kids (@todoingfamily) on Jan 10, 2019 at 6:39pm PST

It took us to an amazing cliff top lookout over Lake Alexandrina. Lake Alexandrina was massive, just 650 square kilometers of predominantly freshwater, into which the Murray River flows into on it’s way out to sea. It was certainly a different colour than what we were used to seeing up on the Victorian border. Alongside it is the Coorong National Park, so we thought we would go for a drive.

Steph had read about a free ferry taking you over the two lakes, so we thought that sounded a great idea. We quickly realized we needed to check locations and maps prior to heading off with our trusty mate Google Maps. We ended up down corrugate roads that after one hour led to a dead end. We ended up doing the full tour of the Coorong National Park, which sits along side Lake Alexandrina.

The boys were pumped, they got to see a dead seal, but we weren’t so pumped about all of the dust and corrugations! It was a nice drive in the end though, and Google Maps regained a bit of trust with us ultimately getting to the ferry across the lower lakes. Although the boys were a little underwhelmed at first! Perhaps they were expecting a cruise ship. The ferry took us across to Australia’s only inland lighthouse at Point Malcolm, in fact the only one in the Southern Hemisphere. It was used to guide ferries through the lower lakes up to the Murray, carrying people and supplies.

Not all sightseeing goes to plan, we had high hopes for our first pink lake, but it wasn’t meant to be! On arrival at the Pink Lake, it was bone dry!

We had a great few days at Meningie, and it was time to move on to another location in the Murraylands, this time Tailem Bend. This is just below the major town of Murray Bridge. We were joined there with a bunch of unusual campers! 100 buses surrounded the Tailem Bend Football Club oval, all parked there for the duration of the 25^th Australian Scout Jamboree. If you’ve watched out Series 1, you will know we are caravan newbies, so we have a lot of things to learn and try out as we go. We used the Ezylevel gadget to level the caravan.

That gadget was one of the gadgets JD had snuck into our budgets, and to be honest it’s been really good in terms of being an easy way to level the van. You turn it on, drive the van forward or back, it tells you the adjustments needed and then beeps and goes green when level. Something else we had been trying to work out was our fridge in the back of the car, and in particular the auxillary battery we had put in to run it. We actually ran the lithium battery dead flat. It was unresponsive, and even a long drive in the car didn’t get it up and running.

It turns out batteries go into a hibernation mode when flat, and they need a serious charge to get them back up and running again. We carry with us a Redarc 190W Solar Blanket, and with the power of the sun, in just under an hour, we had our battery back up to a reasonable charge and then beyond. We were blown away by that result. We’ve partnered with Rerdarc for this lap of Australia, so we have some great gear, but when you’re a novice trying to work it all out, mistakes still happen! We simply had the fridge running too cold, for too long, in a hot car.

Since then, we’ve worked out we need to allow airflow in the car, and make sure we go for a good drive or have the solar blanket out and plugged in to keep it all humming. You can check out our Redarc gear and setup here on our website. Tailem bend was really hot, so we fell back to an old favourite, with evening swims in the Murray River! It was great to have a couple of picnic dinners by the river, and thoroughly enjoyed a good swim.

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A hot dry day yesterday! We’re low cost camping at the local footy club, just $10 per night. But with no power we had to be creative to cool down. We went down to a picnic area on the Murray River and the boys got to cool off bobbing around like apples in their lifejackets. We keep these in the car just for such occassions, as well as the fishing gear which got another non successful workout too. Just half an hour up the road from Meningie and amazing how much hotter and dryer it is! #tailembend #thebend #southaustralia #seeaustralia #murray #murrayriver

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The next day, we headed off to the Jamboree, which is where over 10,000 scouts came together or a massive 12 day camp. On the visitors day we arrived, that population exploded to over 20,000 people. There were 18 different countries represented at Jamboree, and every Australian state and territory was there.

We had our local Scout Group present, so we headed in to check out there site, and then took a walk around the entire camp and participated in a number of different activities. The Jamboree was held at The Bend Racetrack in Tailem Bend. Whilst there we headed over to check out the free car museum.

We didn’t end up spending a lot of money in Tailem Bend, as most of that stuff was free, and the campground was just $10 a night. Given we started our lap of Australia in peak period, it was good to give the budget a bit of a rest as a lot of our accommodation thus far had been at summer premium rates.

There are some great parks and playground around Tailem Bend. We spent a fair bit of time at the Steam Train playground, right opposite the main street. We had a great stay in the Murraylands. It’s a great spot for fishing, swimming and just generally relaxing. It got a bit hot while we were there, but we got through it and were really looking forward to heading off to our next stop.

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