Gembrook North

We are still waiting for our adventure to begin when we can get away and explore Oz as we had planned. So far we feel that we've spent a long time hanging around between seeing family and friends which, while it's been great, has been a bit frustrating. We are looking forward to after 20 October when we will be off to the great unknown - except we know it will be warmer!

We had to vacate the campsite by 10:00 and needed to fill our water tanks and empty our toilet and grey water. None of this was difficult, just unpleasant in the rain. We left at about 10:15 and headed for Melton Botanic Gardens. “The Melton Botanic Garden has an easy 2.4 km walk which includes an interesting diversity of dry climate plants (mostly from Australia) and a circumnavigation of the Darlingsford Lake.” Probably lovely in the sunshine, and the “dry climate plants” looked happy enough in the rain. We met someone walking their dog who wanted to chat with us like we were long-lost friends. She was in full waterproofs and I didn’t even have my umbrella with me!

Back to Bill and off to 4WD Supacentre (via Bunnings to return something that didn’t fit - plus a takeaway coffee) to find all the things we never knew we needed. I had high hopes that the 4WD place would be filled with gadgets and gizmos that would keep me occupied for hours and that I’d want to buy to kit out Bill with. Nope, all very mundane and pretty uninteresting. There was a pink swag with a matching pink sleeping bag that didn’t seem very Oz, but nothing of interest. Next stop … IKEA.

Bun had wanted to come to IKEA first after collecting Bill as you can buy single plates, cutlery, see and touch all duvets etc. However, that would have required a 4-hour round trip and all savings would have gone in fuel costs. As it was, we couldn’t find most of what we wanted and extra things we saw that we thought would work well in Bill, they didn’t have in stock. It was a pretty disappointing visit but we did get a few things, so the visit wasn’t entirely wasted, plus it was en route to our campsite and we had food there so we wouldn't have to cook tonight.

After two hours of driving into the mountains, we arrived at the “Kurth Kiln Scout Loop free camping” campsite. As the name states, a free campsite near Kuth Kiln but, unfortunately, in the woods. Despite our desire to camp in the open - or at least not under trees, that was going to be impossible. We were going to have another disturbed night with mega drips off the branches and leaves. The site was pretty vast and consisted of a number of looped dirt tracks through the forest. As we drove around to find a suitable place to camp, we could see people camping in an array of vehicles, under tarpaulins, tents etc. However, we were out of a commercial campsite and free camping again and Bill looked much more at ease in a forest.Read more