Jan 14 to 20  Continuing west we stop at Barham. The caravan park is one of the best we have stayed at on the trip. We are right on the Murray and very close to the town and its amenities. Imagine our surprise when we checked in and the owner told us there was another van here from the Sunshine Coast. What a surprise to see Jeff and Faye Chapple on a site just 50 metres away. Jeff and Faye (we know them from Pelican Waters Golf Club) were the couple we also bumped into last year at Yeppoon. They have been away since Christmas and are also making their way along the Murray.

We play golf at Barham Golf Club and also at Cohuna (locals pronounce it Coona), which is the home course of Stuart Appleby. Stuart’s father played in the small Sunday comp we played in. Both Barham and Cohuna are great typical examples of country golf clubs surviving with few members and great volunteer workforces. The 5th hole at Barham is known at ‘Gallipoli’ – take a look at the bunker in front of the green and you will see why.

There is a lovely redgum statue river walk with many wooden statues sculptured out of huge redgums using a chainsaw. One of the statues is a likeness of Stuart Appleby.

Jan 10 to 13  We move west to Echuca (twinned with Moama in NSW), which is ,unfortunately and disappointingly, in the middle of large upgrades to all the tourist sites along the River. There are quite a few of the famous paddle steamers at Echuca but they could also do with some updating ! We play golf at Rich River on a very windy day. Weather is still very hot.

Jan 3 to 9  Our first experience of the great Murray River occurs at Yarrawonga. First impressions – not that big and very muddy !! Yarrawonga, which is in Victoria,  is twinned with its sister town Mulwala over the river in New South Wales. We find this situation very often and it goes back to the time when poker machine gambling was banned in Victoria but not in NSW. Hence, these ‘twin towns’ developed all along the Murray.

We play golf at Yarrawonga Mulwala, at Cobram and also at Howlong, where Siobhan blows away the competition with 43 points ! Howlong was a typical example of a really friendly country golf course, a pleasure to play. Note the picture taken at Yarrawonga which shows the flood water level in 1993.

Rutherglen is famous for its ‘stickies’ – impossible not to sample some and invest in a couple of bottles. Take a look at the photo of the sand greens at the Rutherglen Golf Club.

Yarrawonga / Mulwala is the site of the first of many weirs along the Murray. As a result the huge man-made Lake Mulwala provides a large body of water for all kinds of water sports – providing you can avoid the thousands of dead trees !!

The weather is now heating up with most days aver 30 degs – even the local sheep have to take to the shade of a tree !