31 January 2012 - Meningie

Time to leave Victor Harbor and start heading further east. We packed up and did a quick trip to a local mechanic to get a cracked weld on the bike hitch sorted. Nothing major, just a small crack that need to be touched up. 25 mins and $25 later we were on the road for Meningie. We crossed the Murray River at Wellington on the car ferry. The ferry speeds across the few hundred metres of river at a rapid pace. Much faster than the ferry that crosses the Hawkesbury River at Wisemans Ferry just north of Sydney. All of the Murray River ferries are named after birds and we travelled on the 'Quail'. We arrived at the campsite by Lake Albert around lunchtime and had the obligatory cheese and tomato sandwiches. The crowds have certainly dropped off since the end of the school holidays and it is getting very quiet. We walked into town, although there was not much to see, and headed back to set up camp. No annex on the trailer tonight, to speed up the packing and unpacking process.  Lake Albert is the smaller of the two lakes at the end of the Murray River, Lake Alexandrina is the larger lake. It would have been good to have small boat to do a bit more exploring but perhaps we will leave that for another trip. It was a cool evening so we did not hang around outside the tent for too long and got to bed pretty early.

Interestingly Meningie is only 40km from Raukken, the birthplace of David Unaipon who is featured on the Aus $50 note. He was an aboriginal preacher, inventor and writer. The small church pictured next to his portrait on the note is still there and can be visited although we only found this out a bit late for us to get there.