After waiting for the fog to lift it was at first a pleasant drive along the highway towards Canberra. However, as we travelled the traffic got very heavy and when we bypassed Canberra I began to feel like I was in a game of Tetris with cars passing, changing lanes, etc. we had a brief stop at Eagle Hawk for lunch, then on to Goulburn.

Goulburn is quite an old town, for Australia, and one of the consequences is underpasses that are too low for our van. We encountered two of them as we negotiated around, first going to a dump point, then trying to find a water tap. In the end we gave up and went and booked ourselves into a caravan park. Although we had to level up a bit on arrival it was a relief.

We had planned to buy our evening meal. Unfortunately most of the choices close by were fast food outlets. We walked there after dark, got separated, and I eventually found the area and chose a double chicken hamburger. Not much of an evening meal, but we followed up with fruit and yogurt. T

he caravan park had ensuite style individual bathrooms and I had my evening and morning showers there, despite how cold it was outside. Usually Stephen goes for a shower to wash his hair, but he was avoiding the cold.

After a good night’s sleep all felt rosy again and we headed off with the aim of getting to Orange or Bathurst. Unfortunately this mean crossing the great dividing range again. I feel a bit like Bill Bryson who said that he felt he was fated to spend time with all of the stupid people on the planet as a travel writer. I feel it is my fate to have to keep crossing this range😀

It was lovely at first as the road was very good and there wasn’t much traffic. We stopped at a viewing point for a huge wind farm.

We chose the little town of Tuena, an old gold mining town for our lunch break. We stopped at a larger town on the way where I went to the IGA and bought a lovely fresh loaf of bread, amongst other things, and that with soup was lovely.

During the rest time afterwards I realised that I was too tired to tackle the rest of the drive. We don’t know how far we will have to go to get out of the mountains. Our picnic spot is actually a camping area. There were some powered sites, but only in areas that were boggy, so we decided to stay on the fairly solid grassed area we chose for lunch.

Later, Stephen walked to the general store to pay our $5.00 fee and I cooked a meal in the Instant Pot. We’ve been cautious of doing this even with our good battery system, but it only draws 800 watts maximum when heating up , and very little once it is up to pressure. I used many of our beautiful Indian spices, but kept the chilli level low, which is kinder for our stomachs. We had more of our fresh loaf with the meal.

And the batteries only went a little below 80% and had recovered to over 80% this morning. I’m not sure how as this was before the solar charger was activated.

It’s foggy again this morning, what you’d expect at a fairly high elevation when being camped in a depression below the town. There is no internet here, but we both had downloaded books to read and aside from the slight frustration we feel at not having internet it doesn’t do us any harm.

Our park up for tonight is in Stuart Town, a village about 60 kms north of Orange. Flushing toilets and peace and quiet. plus 4g.

Frosty and sunny this morning in Stuart Town. As soon as the sun came up I opened the windscreen blinds and the sun has warmed the inside of the van, allowing us to turn the heating off sooner.

We’ve decided to continue north on the main highway. The B roads are much damaged by the rain, with many potholes. We hope the main highway will be in better condition. But today is a ‘service’ day when we get water, dump tanks, do shopping and go to a laundromat. We may not travel very far today.

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