The day dawned cool, but bright and sunny. Teresa was fine overnight. No smells to worry her.

I took Leo on a 1h walk this morning. I thought I’d tire him out so he’ll sleep in the car most of the day (which worked!). We walked around Marong (not a really large town). I’d driven past a lot of times, but never really explored the town.

We headed out around 11am all excited to get to Mildura.

Google Maps said the trip would take a little over 4 hours, but I figured with stops and our lower speed, it would be close to 5:30.

“Lower speed” I hear you exclaim. That’s not like you David! I guess I’m getting more mature.

I had researched that travelling at 90kmh is a lot more fuel efficient than at 100 so we had decided to travel at 90 wherever possible. Although that’s not so hard to do with a truck directly behind you. So I sped up to 100 or 110 until the truck was able to pass.

The cruiser handles wonderfully at 90 (and even 100) when towing a caravan. However, it feels a little skittish at 110 so I tried to stay below that as much as possible.

We also perfected the ‘nomad wave’ on this leg – waving at every caravan we passed. We’re mystified that our hearty wave is not always returned. We’ll see if holiday makers in South Australia are more friendly.

There was still lots of water on the side of the road around Charlton where they had the flood a few weeks ago. We’ve been reading about problems with muddy caravan park sites here and hope by the time we get to South Australia things there have dried out from their recent storms.

We stopped for lunch at Wedderburn, and had another break at Sea Lake. We’re on the lookout for caravan parks now, and saw some vans parked in the distance at the Sea Lake rest stop. Teresa too Leo to investigate and met a lovely woman who was staying there and told us all about it. It’s a council run park (on the honour system) and a pretty cheap rate for a powered site. If it wasn’t so close to Mildura, we would add it to our list of places to stay.

Teresa stated to feel drowzy from chemical exposure from the car in the afternoon. Even though we had one window slightly down, it wasn’t enough to counter the off-gas from the car. We figure it was the warmer weather that was causing the extra smells. Teresa: 0, Smells: 1

We finally got to Mildura around 5pm and settled into the caravan park (Big 4 Crossroads which is within walking distance of Maria and Michael’s). It’s been 7 years since we were last here, and while some things have changed (Teresa remarked on Big W, finally being in Mildura, and a new Coles supermarket), a lot is still the same.

I noticed the lack of fruit sellers on the side of the road. Michael said later that the council had banned them. And sure enough, when we crossed the border to GolGol, the roadside stalls were back with gusto.

It’s a nice caravan park. Big shady sites with lots of grass and the park is not too full either. We booked until Sunday (4 days) initially – again worried about Teresa’s ability to cope with the smells. We need to stay until at least Fri for Michael’s birthday, and Gabe (who drives up tomorrow) leaves on Sunday. We’ll see how we go.

We found the park through WikiCamps – a great app that lists all the caravan parks and camping sites around Australia and allows you to filter (our current filter: Allows Dogs). The best part is the user generated comments. Comments are crowd sourced – they are added by other users of the app. And because the park owner has no control over the app, you see lots of good (and bad) comments about a park. This park was rated good by most comments, and is pet friendly. Yey!

We were placed in the ‘pet’ section of the park with a couple of vans either side. No smells either, so Teresa:1, Smells: 1.

After setting up the caravan, we headed to Michael and Maria’s house, and I think they were as pleased to see us as we were to see them. They had both gone to a lot of effort to change their washing powder and not use bleach or other chemicals for the last month, and it worked because Teresa was able to be in their house with very few issues. Teresa:2, Smells: 1.

Maria had cooked a wonderful dinner, which we ate gratefully. We headed home early as we were both tired after two days driving and keen to get to bed.