Day 2 – Stawell to Nhill

Last night was a beautiful, clear, starry night with the sky unpolluted by big city lights.  We heard on the TV news that we should be able to see lots of meteorites as a result of Halleys Comet passing, but that was best seen between 3.00 am and 7.00 am, so needless to say we missed the meteorite display.

One of the by-products of clear skies overnight is cold – and it was still very clear and quite cold when we finally awoke this morning.  Unfortunately it turned out that the heater didn’t want to operate, and we had an error message on the solar controller.

Beautiful clear morning

A few phone calls later and we headed back to Stawell to visit an auto-electrician recommended by our motorhome dealer.  Ann took the opportunity to pick up some lunch treats and we then enjoyed a coffee at the nearby café while the auto-electrician crawled under the van and did his thing.

Bertha at the auto electrician

The cafe had some interesting visitors, and great coffee.

We then enjoyed an early lunch at a very nice park in Stawell.  There were clean facilities, friendly ducks, a bridge across the lake to a walking track and plenty of picnic tables.  We sat outside near Kelly’s Bridge in the sun enjoying our lunch before eventually hitting the road again.

Beautiful place to stop for picnic lunch on the outskirts of Stawell.

From Stawell we headed back along the A8 Highway past the Grampians on our left and stopped for a photo opportunity at the Giant Koala at Dadswells Bridge.

Unmissable tourist photo opportunity.

The road condition from here was not all that great and the landscape was very flat and dry.  The clear skies and horizon were punctuated by grain silos.  We drove through Horsham without stopping as there seemed to be roadworks everywhere, so we kept going.

Dry and flat, with silos along the railway line.

We took a brief detour from the highway and stopped in Dimboola for a walk around town.  Dimboola is a pretty little country town but it is extremely sad to see so many vacant shops and so little activity.  Attempts have certainly been made to spruce up the town and make it more attractive to tourists, and there are several very nice shops, cafes and a good supermarket, but overall it is still very sad.

Dimboola streetscape.

From Dimboola we continued along the highway in the general direction of Adelaide, and stopped overnight at the Nhill Caravan Park.  This is a nice, small country caravan park under new management.  We found a good level site and hooked up power, water and sullage, then set up our chairs with cool drinks and a snack outside.  I then cooked dinner on our new BBQ which we ate outside before we retired inside to escape the mossies.

As I write this the temperature is still in the low twenties and we have the door open and fans on.  Another beautiful, starry night.

We are looking forward to a long walk around this very pretty and lively town in the morning.