Tocumal (nickname Toc) pop 2,150 is a quaint small town on the NSW bank of the Murray river. There are lots of free camping areas on the "beaches" and very popular by the amount of campers around - mind you it is school holidays and there are rugrats everywhere. Nice local pub which we will visit on Sat night to see the NRL league final between the Paramatta Eels and Melbourne Storm. Today we did big laundry, sorted out the Tribby, and late afternoon went over the bridge into Victoria and off road to a family resort called "Time Out" on the river bank to look for Koalas. Didn't take long, there was one above within 20 metres of where we parked!. In total we saw 6 Koalas, some of them within handshake distance. Big ones, small ones, they completely ignored us. First time in Australia we have seen them in the wild, and they appear to be abundant around the Time Out camp.
Tocumwal Friday 2 Oct
We left the caravan park yesterday morning and moved about 2kms to a camp beside the river. It has toilets & clean water, $5 per day. Parked facing the river, great view.
Not many here but Victoria school hols start today (bugger). We will be here until Monday and then meander upstream on the Victoria side to somewhere like Wodonga or Albury. It's still cool and will possibly rain later. Went to Cobram, a larger town 15 mins away this morning and had the laptop keyboard fixed - they actually had an identical spare kboard out the back and replaced our faulty one - how jammy was that !. Also bought a wireless keyboard and mouse for a backup. They had a Woollies there so stocked up and also got some cheap petrol at their Caltex link.
Pics: Koonoomoo big strawberry (yum), Town Beach camp by Murray, Home office on batteries.
Tocumwal Tuesday 6 Oct
Yesterday did a box trip from here to Finley, west to Deniliquin, south to Mathaura, and east back to Toc. Lovely country, lots of sheep, sunny, and got the main battery charged via the Anderson plug.
Today went to the IGA and stocked up on tucker, tonight we having homemade hamburgers. Wind has come up and we had a sudden squally shower. Tomorrow we head off on the NSW side of the river east to Corowa to stay 3 days. George and Maree are two caravanners we met at Sunseeker Caloundra and they live at Corowa so will pop in and see them while there. It's been lovely here (except for heavy road noise from the Newell highway over the river - during the night, convoys of trucks go past every 15-30 seconds. Unbelievable.
Photos at the top: Tocumwal main street, and taking the dog .... err lamb, for a stroll. Will go for another look at the Koalas at Time Out tonight.
