Wagga Wagga to Oura Beach Reserve 10th April, 2019

We had a morning of sight seeing in WW. We went for a short walk in the wildlife reserve where we were camping, then drove to the Visitor Centre car park and walked around the block viewing churches. There was a Presbyterian, an Anglican, a Catholic and a Uniting Church. I bumped into a local man, a teacher at the Catholic School, and asked him why they were grouped together. He said it was an old part of town near the river, and this was a section of high ground above flood levels. Makes sense.

The Anglican Church and the Catholic Cathedral were both very fine buildings. We were fortunate that when we went into the Anglican church someone was practising on the organ, lovely peaceful music that suited the meditative aspect of the church. The Catholic church is a beautiful sandstone building.

After our walk and meditation in two of the churches we went to the local Botanic Gardens. That involved driving to the other side of WW, missing our entry, going up and over a steep hill and around the streets to try again.

I was more interested in morning tea than the gardens, the cafe was closed, but I had filled the new thermos I bought at Kmart yesterday and the water was hot enough to make our tea. We had some anzac biscuits and it was quite a lovely morning tea. Stephen looked around as much as he could – some things were closed.

At our free campsite in WW we noticed that the toilet rolls were padlocked, a sensible move, perhaps, given all the campers and homeless people using the camp. What surprised me was that the toilet rolls at the Botanic Gardens were also padlocked. What! Is there an illicit trade in toilet rolls in WW?

We decided to head out of town for our lunch and we looked up a place on Wikicamps that was available to camping. The comments section said it was lovely. It is also just 14 kms out of town, ideal. By the time we had finished our picnic lunch we had made up our minds to stay the night. There are many vans around, but the area is large enough that we are not particularly close to anyone else. A couple of people are running generators, but compared with the noise of the ouras (parrots) the constant burring noise is not annoying.

There is a sandy beach, possibly man made though we are at the bend in the river and the areas not covered by water are also sandy. There are picnic tables and fire pits as well. I could not find any mention of camping time limits. There is just one toilet, but it is a flushing toilet and clean. Most of the vans are self contained and where they are not, people have put up little toilet tents.

We have switched over to our winter doona, which is both lighter and warmer than our other doona. The winter PJs are also being taken out of storage. It was cold overnight in WW and we expect it will be pretty cold here as well.

The featured image at the top of this post shows Stephen relaxing on a bench as the sun is setting. We have a view of the river from our dining room window and the other windows look out onto green grass and huge trees.