Simple Sanctuaries, Perfect Purpose

The compass of our nomadic existence rarely points true north—it swings instead between opportunity and obligation, between wanderlust and workshop schedules. Our plan, fluid as all plans become when home has wheels and horizon serves as calendar, was to drift slowly northward like smoke from a dying campfire. Yet even smoke must acknowledge the wind's direction, and Sal's final two-day Melbourne workshop demanded we remain tethered to civilisation's steel arteries—close enough to a train line for her necessary return to urban purpose.

The Murray's recent embrace had awakened something primal within us, that ancient human need to camp beside water's edge. Those days listening to Australia's arterial river had spoiled us for dry camps, leaving us thirsting not just for water's practical necessity but for its constant conversation—the particular peace that comes from liquid movement through landscape. Seymour appeared on our maps like an answered prayer, promising both rail connection and water's proximity, practicality married to desire.

Through the town we drove, past the familiar architecture of regional Victoria—weatherboard houses with corrugated iron roofs, the obligatory pub anchoring the main street, shops that closed at five and all day Sunday. But we weren't seeking Seymour's modest urban offerings. Twenty minutes beyond the last street light, along roads that narrowed from bitumen to gravel to barely-there track, we found what the maps had promised: Major Creek.

To call it modest would be generosity. This was no mighty Murray, no scenic riverside paradise worthy of tourism brochures. Major Creek was quintessentially Australian in its understatement—a thin brown ribbon winding through eucalyptus and scrub, moving with the lethargy of thick honey on a cold morning. No amenities graced its banks, no designated camping spots with their numbered sites and regulation fire rings. Just red earth, river gums leaning over water like elderly philosophers pondering their own reflections, and the creek itself, pursuing its ancient conversation with gravity.

"Perfect," Anth declared as we pulled up, and we understood exactly what he meant. Not perfect in any conventional sense—no sunset views, no swimming holes, no remarkable features to photograph and share. Perfect in its absolute ordinariness, its complete lack of pretension or performance. This was honest Australian bush, unadorned and unashamed, offering nothing more than space, silence, and the steady whisper of moving water.

We positioned our golden home with practiced precision, close enough to hear the creek's nocturnal soliloquy but far enough to avoid morning's inevitable mosquito congregation. The absence of facilities that might deter others only emphasised our evolution as nomads. We carried our own power in solar panels and batteries, our own water in tanks, our own warmth in diesel heating. Self-sufficiency had transformed from challenge to liberation, each "lacking" campsite becoming opportunity to prove our independence from infrastructure's umbilical cord.

While many who embrace road life choose urban practicality when necessity calls—carparks behind shopping centres, street parking in industrial areas, the anonymous safety of well-lit truck stops—we would always choose nature's uncertainty over concrete's convenience. Even this humble creek, barely worthy of its cartographic notation, offered something no carpark could provide: the breathing space of wild places, the particular quality of darkness uninterrupted by streetlights, the morning chorus of birds who've never learned to fear human presence.

That first evening, as we prepared our simple meal and settled into our familiar routines, the creek performed its subtle magic. Its quiet persistence filled the spaces between conversation, neither demanding attention nor allowing itself to be forgotten. We found ourselves unconsciously timing activities to its rhythm—the gentle plop of water over hidden stones becoming metronome for our own movements. This wasn't the Murray's grand symphony but rather a lullaby hummed by landscape itself, intimate and hypnotic.

The two nights at Major Creek would leave no dramatic memories, no stories worthy of repeated telling. We wouldn't rush to recommend it to fellow travellers or mark it as must-see on any map. Yet in its very ordinariness lay its gift. Between the spectacular coastal adventures behind us and whatever lay ahead, this pause beside a modest creek offered recalibration. Not every camp needs to inspire poetry; sometimes the highest purpose is simply to provide safe harbour between life's larger movements.

As darkness wrapped around our bush sanctuary that first night, we listened to the creek maintaining its patient dialogue with time. Somewhere to the south, Melbourne's millions went about their evening routines, train lines carrying commuters home to mortgaged certainties. Somewhere ahead, Sal's workshop waited with its own demands and opportunities. But here, now, beside this unremarkable waterway, we existed in the space between—neither coming nor going, neither pursuing nor fleeing, simply being present in the generous embrace of Australian bush that asked nothing of us except perhaps to notice its quiet beauty.

This spot served its purpose perfectly, though perhaps not in ways we could have anticipated. It reminded us that in choosing always to seek nature over convenience, we weren't just selecting campsites but declaring values. Each modest creek chosen over comfortable carpark, each simple bush camp over serviced site, represented small rebellion against the assumption that comfort must be purchased, that beauty requires designation, that worth depends on recommendation algorithms and review scores.Read more