Riverland and Burra, South Australia

The beautiful River Murray

                                             

We set off on Saturday morning for our intended destination of Big Bend on the River Murray.  We drove through Chain of Ponds and on to Walkers Flat.  We stopped here to have a look around as it has been some time since we were here and we had thought we might camp here but the camping area was quite crowded so we had a quick look around while we waited for the ferry.  There was a little plaque to Suzy, The Ferry Dog. 

 What a lovely little story of this great little dog, we had not heard of this little dog before.
 


Ferry crossing at Walkers Flat

We crossed on the ferry and headed for Swan Reach to have a look there for a camping spot.  We have been to Swan Reach before and its a nice little river town, has a good pub and a nice park, but we decided to go back a few kilometres to Big Bend as we had been there before but had not camped there.



Big Bend

Big Bend is a few kilometres off the main road but its a good dirt road and we found a nice area right by the river and there were only a couple of other campers about 100 metres away so we levelled our van and settled down for an afternoon of relaxation enjoying the wonderful views of the river.

Lovely trees on the river at Big Bend

We spent some time exploring the area around our camp trying to find some wood as we had brought some with us but decided we needed a bit more if we were going to have a camp fire and use our camp oven.  Unfortunately there wasn't much wood to be found so we decided to save our fire until the next morning and have our morning toast cooked on the fire. 



Morning coffee by the fire

Next morning after our camp fire toast and coffee and a walk along the river bank, we decided to pack up and explore some more of the Murray River.  We drove back into Swan Reach and onto Morgan.  Its been a while since we have been to Morgan, in fact the first trip was in our first caravan about 10 years ago when we stayed in the caravan park on a very hot weekend in January.  This trip however we wanted to have a look at the PS Canally which is being restored, but we could only view it from the old wharf and there was not any information about it so we will have to do more research later as we were thinking of volunteering but they certainly weren't giving visitors any information.

PS Canally at Morgan

After looking around Morgan we decided to drive onto Cadell, another small town on the river, and one we haven't stopped at, and have only driven through.  We were interested in camping on the river here and asked the ferry operator and were given some directions to a nice area on Kings River Road, so after some major decision making as to where we would spend the night, we settled on a spot just off the road but right on the river with some holiday houses nearby but not too close.  There was a bird hide in the lagoon opposite and plenty of birds to keep us occupied trying to work out their names.