It had been a busy week… preparations for the next 3-month Wild Adventure were well underway… Branch was quietly excited and made sure he was present so as not to miss the next instalment…

The plan was to meet at Goulburn at 0800 on Friday 26^th but the Hunters had the brilliant idea of getting the jump on the rest of the team by free camping the night before at Derrick VC rest area free camp just before Goulburn.

Klaus was concerned about his weight so had decided to go early to Gundagai and stay at the caravan park there to get weighed in and checked…

We and the Wells decided to join the Hunters – thus Matt and Sharon were the last to leave Sydney on the morning of the 26^th.

The camp at Goulburn was great – but the night was really cold… ice all  over the cars in the morning…..

but as we were preparing to leave it was apparent that the Wells had the jump on all of us… rather they needed a jump as the fridge had not changed over to gas overnight and had drained their car battery… Branch could not believe his luck – an incident within less than 24hrs after leaving home… and Dave’s jumper leads just did not cut it.

Fortunately Gordie had purchased a Noro Genius – a bargain at $295 and it was worth every cent- the Pearl started without a hitch… and Branch was in his element.

We left and arrived at Goulburn, collected Matt and Sharon and after some legendary bacon and egg rolls at Trapper’s Bakery we were on our way to Gundagai.

Unfortunately there was too much singing “On the road to Gundagai”  in the Wells’ and Hunter’s vans and so they missed the instructions to turn off at the second exit into Gundagai where the Weiss’s were waiting for us on Nangus Road – the way to our lunch stop at Junee.

After making it back to Gundagai, they caught up with us and after hearing about Klaus being overweight by a couple of hundred kg in the car ( ??things had to be moved into the van – did that mean Beryl was driving and Klaus was left behind??) we went on to Junee… after another little misdirection we all met at the Laurie Daly Oval for lunch in the vans.

Rose and Dave found the prime parking spot near their favourite dump point… and Gordie ignored signs doing his washing up at the dump point much to Kerry’s disgust.

We drove on through many small country towns most with great looking pubs – the Coolamon pub was impressive.

Arriving at Narrandera we set up camp at Brewery Flats – a free camp on the edge of the Murrumbidgee River where there were ruins of the old Brewery.

Apparently you could see koalas in the area so we walked around for a while and saw none – so made our way back to camp… and there on the edge of the campsite Rosie found a koala asleep in a gum tree – he was so comfortable but sleepily opened his eyes while we were taking pics…

we saw a second one near the boat ramp… and Trev was in his element catching up with the locals…

Dave and Gordie started up the fire and we spent the evening relaxing and meeting our fellow campers. Gordie managed to befriend a guy named Casey who gave us his wood – he was on the way to Lightning Ridge so did not need any more – he came and sat around the fire with us sharing his life story….